Strong At The Heart

Just now I opened a puffy envelope from McMillan, the company that now owns my publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Inside, amazing, four copies of Strong at the Heart in Japanese!

This edition has two new interviews, one at the beginning and one at the end of the book. Each is with a young Japanese woman. I can’t wait to take it to one of my Japanese speaking friends so I can hear what these new people say!

The translator, or perhaps the author of the Japanese material is, Atsuko Konishi. I haven’t found her on line yet, but I’ll let you know when I do. On Japanese Amazon, it is being marketed with a book called Stand. The cover of Stand has a photograph that is also used in one of the new chapters—an intriguing looking photographer looking out at the reader with her camera covering one eye—a little like the half face of Akaya on the cover of the American edition.

It’s really quite wonderful to realize that this book will reach a whole new audience of child sexual abuse survivors and their supporters, to see the photos and to know that eleven amazing survivors’ stories are in front of me (nine of which I know so well) in a text I cannot yet read!