Strong At The Heart

Free Radio Santa Cruz is a pirate station–no license, not call letters, but a loyal following locally and on line. To get to the studio, Evelyn Hall drove through residential streets, parked, and lead me around the back of an unmarked bungalow. The ground was soggy from the heavy rain and hail we’d had an hour earlier and I was glad I had clogs on. We clattered down concrete steps, then ducked into a standard issue basement, complete with old mattresses propped against the wall and piles of soggy looking cardboard boxes.

The studio was deep in the basement, behind a well defended plywood door with three large bolts on the inside. Evelyn told me they’d been raided by the police before. Radio studios are a jumble of wires and flashing lights, but this one looked like it could be disassembled and moved on short notice. We sat at the console under a big pirate flag.

Ann Simonton of Media Watch, introduced us on the air and then Evelyn took over. She started the conversation by asking about the prevalence of sexual abuse and WHY we haven’t been able to stop this from happening to our kids. We had two full hours of on air time to explore these question and many others and to talk about the stories in Strong at the Heart.

What a luxury it is to have so much time. I’ve had radio news interviews as short as 5 minutes and as long as an hour and a half—with listeners calling in. You can get a lot across in a short amount of time, if you choose your words well.

But two hours? We were able to talk about the back stories of the making of the book. About why I chose the stories I did out of the nearly three dozen interviews recorded over the five years. We explored what it means to come out as a sexually abuse survivor. And why some mothers do not support their children when they tell.

apologia

During the last fifteen minutes of the show Evelyn told listeners that they could call in. Unfortunately, we were both so wrapped up in the conversation that she forgot to flip the switch that allowed for incoming calls. So if you are one of the people who tried—I am so sorry. I did catch a call at the end off air and it was good to hear from a listener who had so much to say herself.

After the radio show, the two of us had lunch downtown. Evelyn is a counselor in my old high school district and runs the Safe Place program for teens. One of her groups is just beginning to read and discuss Strong at the Heart.

Jenner

Tonight’s the book event at 7:30 at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Last night I had dinner with Jenner, whose story is the first chapter of Strong at the Heart. So many people have asked about the song she wrote about the rape was fourteen. She’s planning on bringing her guitar and singing it at tonight’s event! Here’s your chance to hear her: Bookshop Santa Cruz, 7:30 p.m.

I just pulled in to Santa Cruz an hour ago after what became–what with heavy traffic in Santa Rosa and a dinner stop in San Francisco–a nine hour drive, the first leg on my mid-California one week book tour. The highlight of the drive was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into the city in late afternoon, golden sunlight.

Tif Renee, who designed this site, has updated the calendar page with specifics so that if you are in Santa Cruz/Berkeley/Davis area you can find where I’ll be speaking over the next few days.

Tomorrow Evelyn Hall will be interviewing me on Santa Cruz Free Radio from 10-12 PST and you can listen in from their web streaming page. When I retrieved my email a few minutes ago, I found out that an old friend and her daughter are in Santa Cruz this weekend and plan to come to the event at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Two of the people I interviewed for the book and Laura Davis, who write the introduction, will be there, too. It is starting to feel like a party.

Right now I have my fingers crossed that the weather will calm down. If it’s a good day tomorrow, I plan to go diving, my first time in the Pacific.

Right now, though, bed is looking really good.

My blog stats page brings me several gems each week. Helen Munt’s Silent No More has a lovely tribute to Strong at the Heart. Thanks, Helen. Her’s is a fresh voice from a survivor and student perspective. Her blog is just getting off the ground and has some good links.

Another new-to-me survivor blog is Survivors Can Thrive, where the current discussion is on taking action against sexual abuse. Ideas are bubbling there. Go have a look.

Live chat for Strong at the Heart is coming up on Wednesday, April 5th, 10 a.m. in the west, 1 p.m. on the east coast of North America, unless you’re in Halifax. Susan Phillips of Connect for Kids is hosting the hour long live discussion. An active site for people concerned with the well being of children, Connect for Kids lives up to their name.

I just got home from Reading the World VIII, the multicultural children’s literature conference held each spring at the University of San Francisco. It was an excellent conference, well organized, with an impressive range of first rate speakers including Katherine Patterson, Ed Young, Linda Sue Park, Alma Flor Ada, Nikki Grimes and Kate DiCamillo.

It’s a small enough conference that you have the opportunity to have good discussions with the speakers, but big and enduring enough to draw attendees from all over the country. Presenters came from as far away as England (Tony Watkins) and Austria (Michael Schmid) and examined literature and cultural from a wide range of perspectives.

“EVERYDAY HEROES: Sexual Abuse in Young Adult Literature–What are we telling the kids?” was the lengthy title of my workshop. The folks who came were grad students, educators, and authors–including poet Nikki Grimes and Dr. Ada, both of whose work I have taught in my children’s literature classes for years.

We had a good discussion of the realities of abuse and healing and the persistent stereotypes in popular culture today. Then I showed books published for young adults in the last 18 months and looked at the ways abuse survivors are being portrayed.

It’s a mixed bag.

One of the forthcoming books we discussed was The Place Where Losers Go by Canadian poet and author Beth Goobie. It’s a fantasy novel about two survivors of gang rape. I know that sounds weird, but the fantasy works very well as a metaphor for dissociation. Beth Goobie has an insider’s knowledge of trauma and healing (she has written about being a survivor herself) and it really shows in her main character, Skey, who is struggling in high school after a traumatic event that she can’t quite piece together. Beth also has a keen sense of the power of emerging sexuality in the lives of teens.

Another session was given by Chun Yu, author of Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a verse memoir. She talked about how her family had to find the will to go on, that internal strength, in the face of the many traumas that they and their country went through during those years.

From my son Ben who lives in China I’ve heard many other stories of real people’s struggle to endure and build good lives after the relocations, humiliations, imprisonments, and killings. But listening to Chun Yu speak I was struck by the similarity between how she framed her experiences and how the people in Strong at the Heart talk about the ways they’ve found purpose and inner strength in healing from sexual abuse.

Chun Yu commented on the lack of purpose and drive she sees in many people who have not faced such difficulties. That gave me pause.

I just got some fine news. The New York Public Library has listed Strong at the Heart in its annual publication Books for the Teen Age. The 2006 book isn’t available yet (it will be downloadable), but there is an announcement of the exhibit and related book event at the NYPL’s TeenLink page.

Chris Crutcher, who was so supportive in the writing and pre-publication of Strong at the Heart, will give the “celebratory remarks.”

In other news, I’m prepping for this Saturday’s Reading the World conference in San Francisco. My talk will be on the representation of child sexual abuse survivors in young adult literature.

This means I’ve been reading, and re-reading, a stack of YA books and bound galleys of forthcoming books. It is interesting to see how persistent some of the stereotypes are. But there are wonderful books, too.

The standout is Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable. It’s potentially a tough read for a survivor because it is told from inside the head of Keir, a high school football player who rapes a girl on the night of the Senior Prom. BUT–and here’s the thing that is so skillfully done–as the story progresses you lose faith in this self-proclaimed “nice guy” and you begin to see how he is able to delude himself into thinking that what he did was okay. There is also chilling insight into how our culture encourages the potential for violence in young men.

Fortunately, the girl has a voice, too. “You raped me!” she tells Keir. She is clear and strong from the very first page, and she refuses to take on the blame or accept his excuses. If you are up for a tough but excellent read, check it out. Inexcusable recently received the National Book Award for young people’s literature.