Strong At The Heart

Okay, this is the third novel about a young teen girl who escapes from forced marriage in a polygamist cult that has cross my desk in the space of a year. Keep Sweet, by Michele Dominguez Greene, is a good read. Like the other two I’ve reviewed here, this book has its virtues, but laid side by side all three beg the question “Why are we so fascinated by this one story line?”

In Keep Sweet, 14-year-old Alva Jane is an obedient daughter of the third—and favored—wife of her father. (He has a total of seven wives and 29 children.) Alva Jane has never questioned life in the FLDS compound or the authority of the older men who rule it. Although her life is physically hard (she and her mother bake bread every morning for the whole household) she is privileged by her father’s position, privileged enough to dream of being a first wife herself to the handsome and kind John Joseph, her 17-year-old math tutor.

But jealousy runs high in the huge family. Her father’s spurned first wife is out for revenge on Alva Jane’s mother. When Sister Cora discovers Alva Jane and John Joseph in a stolen kiss, all hell breaks loose. Alva Jane is beaten and imprisoned, John Joseph is run off the plantation. Then Alma Jane is married to a particularly violent man three times her age, a man who beats and humiliates his wives into obedience.

Despite the rapes, despite the poverty of opportunity, despite the culture of submission, hope stays alive in Alva Jane. With the help of another unhappy sister wife she prepares to make a run for it.

Clearly the audience for this book is not young girls stuck in polygamist cults. They will never be allowed to read it with its message of hope and its clues to successful escape.

Why does the story matter to the rest of us? There is a creepy fascination with polygamy right now. Just have a look at the “just folks” photo on the cover of the February National Geographic. It isn’t just the snow on the ground that gives you a chill.

Each of the novels centers on a girl who is just coming of age for critical thought. Right at the time she could begin to think and act for herself, she is married off to a controlling man. Each girl comes, eventually, to think for herself enough to attempt escape.

Are we asking, “What would I do if I were one of those girls in prairie dresses? Surely I’d get out of there. How?”

Could it be that the polygamist compound is a metaphor for societal expectations? Do the abusive marriages stand in for garden variety abusive homes?

One thing that haunts me is how unprepared any of the children—Lost Boys or escaped girls—are for life beyond the compound. A real girl, if she could cut herself loose from family and siblings, her culture, religion and home, would be a sitting duck for exploitation. What is waiting for her in the outside world?

Right now I am reading a brand new book The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse by Nancy Whittier.

It’s the first study of the movement to end child sexual abuse in the United States. And unlike the other books I’ve reviewed here, it is not for teens or a popular audience. But it’s well worth reading for anyone concerned about child welfare and social justice movements.

Caveat: I am not finished reading it, but I am already nodding my head and making notes in the margins. Nancy Whittier looks at the movement from its feminist roots through the self help and mutual help era of the 1980’s and mid 1990’s, on through the backlash and into the present. She observes how the movement has changed public perceptions of incest survivors and perpetrators and how its success has also meant the loss of control over the language and meaning given to the survivor experience. She asks questions that are well worth examining, like why have the personal narratives of male survivors of clergy abuse received so much media attention, while those of female survivors have not?

For me, this book provides a larger context for my own story. Social denial in the 50’s and 60’s (I didn’t even have a word for it as a child). Struggling–as a childrens book writer in the 70’s–to explore and represent the heroism it takes for kids to face and report abuse. Publication in 1985 of Promise Not to Tell and a raft of public speaking engagements as the subject broke open. My own major healing in early ’90’s and involvement in the The Healing Woman and Run Riot. The mainstream publication acceptance of Strong at the Heart: How It Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse a book for young adult readers just a few years ago which includes a wide range of abuse and healing experiences.

But for survivors not of my particular generation, there’s a lot here, too. The social roots that the author traces, the analysis of the roles of government and media–all this is our history and informs our identity as survivors. If you want to change the world, it’s well worth seeing what happened when we tried–and did. (And it didn’t all come out roses.)

This is a scholarly work, not an easy read. But the scrupulous research is rooted in lived experiences of survivors and activists. I know. I’m one of the hundreds of people Nancy interviewed over ten years of research and writing. Now, to get back to reading…

Two new young adult novels deal with teenage girls in polygamist cults. This is right from the headlines stuff, of course. The authors take very different approaches, in ways that are of interest to CSA survivors and anyone who has been exploited by organized groups.

The Chosen One, by Carol Lynch Williams (May, 2008) is receiving a big roll out from St. Martin’s Press. Thirteen-year-old Kyra, is very much a free thinker, despite living and being raised in an isolated religious community in the desert. She finds ways to slip away for a few hours at a time, gets access to secular literature through a book mobile, and even has a crush on and begins to make out with one of the cult’s teenage boys. But the Prophet declares she must marry her own 60 year old uncle. Kyra’s revulsion and her defiance get her sweetheart beaten up and run off the ranch–and she is nearly killed herself. Kyra escapes in the blood spattered book mobile–the scene of a real murder. With its car chases and guns and hair breath rescue, the book has a made-for-movies feel to it.

Sister Wife, by Shelley Hrdlitschika (Orca, October 2008) is a much more internal story. Readers go inside the experiences of Celeste, her younger sister, and a secular girl who is taken into the cult. Like Kyra, Celeste is chosen for plural marriage to a much older man, one of the kinder Elders. But Celeste is unhappy with the submissive life expected of her and wonders what it might be like to live in the dangerous secular world. Rather than polarizing her characters into simple good and evil, the author shows the many shades that exist in all of us. The pull of the cult–its well ordered life, the supportive network of farm families–is depicted, as well as the numbing effects of life under the arbitrary control of the Elders. The depiction of the lives of powerless women is especially poignant as Celeste’s mother struggles with too many children and complex relationships with sister wives, and nearly dies because her husband refuses “outside” medicine for a complicated pregnancy. Celeste could walk away at any time, as the “extra” boys do. But bonds of love and belief hold her close. As an emerging individual, she struggles, clearly wanting to spread her wings, but fearing the great cost of losing family and friends. Readers will root for her, and understand her struggle. This is a tough, realistic and satisfying coming of age novel.

As when sexual abuse came out of the closet, I think many people are both attracted and repelled–fascinated, really–by the phenomena of child brides in polygamist cults. The easy take is to imagine one’s self fighting back and defeating all the bad guys. Harder, but ultimately more rewarding, is to understand the complexities–the confusion of affection and damage, learned passivity vs. desire for autonomy–that survivors must struggle with in achieving their own hard won freedom.

As a survivor of childhood abuse, do you ever find yourself accommodating obnoxious behavior? Putting up with crap you really needn’t? Do you trash yourself over it? Or do you give yourself a break?

My friend poet Molly Fisk wrote and performed a fine radio segment on Stockholm Syndrome in her experience as a survivor. (Her first book of poetry Listening to Winter is one of my favorites and has some great insights into survivor experience.) This is what she wrote:

Stockholm Syndrome, by Molly Fisk

So here’s the story. Last week I went out to dinner with some good friends. During the course of the meal, I said that an organization where I volunteer was going to have a sexual harrassment training. The man I was sitting beside also volunteers there, and without missing a beat he said, “I’ve always wanted to get sexually harassed, but no one ever chooses me!”

Now, this is a stupid thing to say. Anyone who thinks it would be fun to get sexually harrassed a) has probably never experienced any kind of harassment, and b) is probably not a woman. Because women know the score about sexual harassment. It was also a fairly hard thing for me to hear, since I was raped as a child, and rape is harassment in its extreme form.

The guy, like many guys before him, was responding to the word sexual, and discounting the word harrassment - making a kind of guy-like joke out of the thing. A different kind of man might have asked why we needed the training, or engaged me in talking about it more seriously.

What’s interesting to me, though, is not his reaction, but mine. I didn’t say, “Shut up, you bozo” in a friendly tone of voice. I didn’t get ticked off and give him the double-barrel-feminist-shotgun response, explaining, with dripping sarcasm, how offensive it was for him to say this, not to mention unkind. I didn’t admit that I was one of the women who had spent almost a year organizing the training.

I did this really weird thing: I laughed loudly and played along. I patted him on his knee and said in a sexy voice that if he ever wanted some sexual harrassment he should just let me know. Even as I was doing this, part of my brain was yelling in outrage, “Are you crazy?!!? What are you doing? You’re supposed to help stop assinine reactions like this, not foster them for God’s sake!”

It took me three days and one sleepless night to sort it out. He’s a big guy, my friend, and he was crowded in next to me in a booth. I wouldn’t have been able to get out if I had wanted to. He has a big-guy voice. I’d been having a hard day and was exhausted before we even sat down to eat. I think those factors greased the way so that I slipped into the prudent response of my childhood when a large man said anything, which was to agree, no matter what I thought, so I wouldn’t get hurt.

There’s a name for this: it’s called Stockholm Syndrome, after a Swedish bank robbery in 1973 when hostages were taken. It refers to the allegiance of victims to their perpetrators, when those perps have been in control for long enough and the violence or threat of violence has been great enough - the most famous example being Patty Hearst joining her kidnappers in the Symbionese Liberation Army and calling herself “Tanya.” It’s prevalent among child abuse survivors, battered women, and other victims of violent crimes, as well as prisoners of war.

Once I had figured out what was going on, I stopped beating myself up for being a jerk. I’m going to stop beating my friend up for being a jerk, too. People aren’t always careful about what they say, unless they’ve been taught that it matters.

Gentlemen, please consider this story your training in the fact that it matters. It really matters. Don’t be a bozo and crack jokes about it.

–

Molly’s essays can be heard at KVRM on Thursday nights at 6:55 pm, Pacific time, closing out the News Hour. (89.5 FM on your dial in much of Northern California) You can read them all and listen to many of them at her website.

I receive Molly’s essays via email, and you can, too, by writing her at molly@mollyfisk.com. Receiving these essays via e-mail is free, but I encourage you to support Molly’s writing with a $36 subscription for 2009; I do each year. More about this on her website listed above. Molly’s CD of radio essays, Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace, is available at CD Baby.

I just stumbled on an excellent website with great resources for child advocates or for anyone concerned with child abuse/recovery/offender issues. Best Interests calls itself “a website for children’s advocates” and it certainly is a great place for people like CASA volunteers, therapists and social workers. Survivors, too, find news and useful information.

The books section is especially rich. Navigating through the subject heading toolbar on the left or the search engine will bring you to a wealth of good titles, mostly for adults. To my joy, I found an excellent page there on Strong at the Heart.

The links page is extensive and hard to use because there are so MANY links in alphabetical order and no way to jump forward or scan. But the subject tool bar works great.

The book pages link to Powell’s Books one of the last, great independent bookstores.

BTW, Cody’s Books, that great Berkeley, California, institution has just sunk under the waves. If you want to be able to open a book before you buy it, explore quirky or deliberately focused collections, and keep your local economy strong remember to walk in to your locally owned bookstore and spend some money there!

I can’t imagine life without my hometown bookstore, Northtown Books. The owner, Dante, tells me that he will be upgrading the web presence soon and include a searchable inventory and book ordering feature. In the mean time, he’s keeping a book blog that’s worth checking out.

This weekend I’ll be headed for Davis, California, to receive the Friend of the Child Award from young child abuse advocates.

The Courageous Kids’ Network is a group of young adults who speak out about their experiences being placed with abusive parents by family courts. Now that they are out of abuseve homes, they are speaking out to help other kids. I’ve heard a lot about them but this will be my first chance to meet them in person.

The conference is the 14th Annual Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Conference put on by the California Protective Parents Association.

Jessica Hendry, who played Dejar in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will speak at the conference about her memoir How Yo Cook Your Daughter, and what it was like when she confronted the famous father who abused her.

more news

Later this month, on April 24, I’ll be speaking at the Downstate Conference on Child Abuse in Southern Illinois.

I’ll present a plenary session on STRONG AT THE HEART and lead a workshop in Overcoming the Stigma of Abuse.

Twenty three years ago I wrote my first children’s book about childhood sexual abuse, PROMISE NOT TO TELL. After it came out I received occasional heartfelt and touching letters, typed or handwritten, and forwarded to me by my editor in New York. Occasionally a therapist in my own area would call or stop me on the street to let me know she was using the book with a client or a children’s librarian would let me know it was being checked out. That was the way it happened then.

Now, having a website for STRONG AT THE HEART, I receive inquiries from all over. Kids who want to know how to get out of a bad situation. A young woman 7000 miles away who writes to me about finding the courage to go into therapy. A man in his 50’s amazed at and encouraged by seeing the faces of male survivors. Conference organizers who want me to speak at their event or do trainings for professionals. Other writers. Survivors with resources to suggest. Librarians asking for book referrals.
We have conversations. I hear how people’s lives change. We exchange ideas and experiences.  And I learn so much.

gift from within

A reader recommended a site that others may find helpful. Here’s the self-description from the organization:

Gift From Within, a nonprofit organization, is dedicated to those who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those at risk for PTSD, and those who care for traumatized individuals. We have articles written by authorities in the field, poetry and art gallery for trauma survivors, peer support network, coping and inspirational stories, a Q&A, videos, book reviews, list of retreats for survivors, global list of trauma survivor support groups, meditations, and other educational materials and resources.

I just received in the mail a hard copy of The Prevention Researcher, “a multidisciplinary journal focusing on successful adolescent development and at-risk youth.”

There–on pages 11 and 12–is the most comprehensive and thoughtful review of Strong at the Heart ever. The reviewer, Dr. Jacqueline Golding, is writing here for a professional audience. She really understands the power of survivors defining their experience.

You can read the full review on line. Here’s a snippet from the end:

“In addition to being a wonderful resource for adolescent and adult survivors of sexual abuse, Strong at the Heart can be of great use to people who have not been sexually abused, but are close to someone who has been. … A survivor’s partner, friend, or parent can use Strong at the Heart to better understand and support the healing process of the person close to them.”

The current issue of The Prevention Researcher can be read on line. Their website has an extensive archive of articles on healing and the prevention of trauma–some of which require a fee to download.

picturebooks

BTW, the reviewer is herself an author. Healing Stories: Picture Books for the Big and Small Changes in a Child’s Life is an annotated bibliography of over 500 picture books. The author is a clinical psychologist and a mother who has a clear sense of what resources will be helpful for parents, counselors and teachers who work with the very young.

No, it is never too late for a good review!

The latest appeared in the November issue of PPT Express, a newsletter for teachers and others working with pregnant and parenting teens.

The editor, Jeanne Lindsay, who is also the publisher of Morning Glory Press, had asked me for an article on Sexual Abuse and Teen Pregnancy. Then she ran a review of my book as well!

Here is the review in its entirety:

“Nine survivors of childhood sexual abuse speak frankly about the abuse they experienced and the ways they found to heal. Research shows that a majority of teen mothers and a high percentage of teen fathers have been sexually abused. I highly recommend having copies of this book available for reading and discussing with teens. Those who have been abused can learn they are not alone, and that it is possible to heal. And this book can help those who have not experienced abuse become more caring and compassionate. Order from your local or on-line bookstore.

Nice–and concise!

a birthday of sorts
It’s been two years since Strong at the Heart was launched at Northtown Books in Arcata. What a ride those two years have been.

Speaking on the book has given me the opportunity to talk with so many different kids of people about various aspects of healing from sexual abuse, about literature for teens, about how we can make the world a safer place for kids. From the public library in Bend, Oregon, to Harvard University, from San Francisco’s Mission District to the IVAT conference in San Diego, it has been a long and fascinating trip. One I could not have foreseen two years ago. Thanks to all of you who have made these two years so rich!

For some reason, readers at this site tend to write emails directly to me, rather than post their thoughts here. For me that’s great, but then others miss out on the conversation.

Today I heard from a gentleman who attended a book event that Arturo and I did a few days ago in the Bay Area (yep, I’ll post about that soon). He sent a link for an excellent article on HIV and sexual abuse survivors.

The article has good advice for survivors dealing with doctors–whether they are HIV positive or have other health issues, so I want to share the resource with the rest of you.

It’s called Two Time Survivor. Incest survivors who are dealing with AIDs aren’t the only “two timers.” When I was diagnosed with a rare cancer four years ago, my first response was “I’m already a survivor! I don’t need a second time around.”

But in the next few days I realized that dealing with a sexual abuse history had taught me a lot that helped me with this new event. First of all, I knew I wasn’t going to try to do this alone or in isolation. I told all my friends and those who could deal with it did and were great support, and those who couldn’t, well bless them, we can’t be all things to all people.

I also recognized the feelings I was going through. A serious diagnosis is a trauma, and I had a traumatic reaction–fear, disbelief, anxiety. But going through healing from child abuse has given me a lot of tools. I’ve faced terror and walked through it. I know that tough realities can be faced, and lived through. I have the skills I need to calm myself and get centered, to stay focused in the present. And I knew how to ask for help and organize a healing team.

Fortunately my health is great right now. But going through that tough time gave me a new appreciation for all that the healing process had given me.