On the young feminist blog fbomb there's an article that examines the developing awareness of a young woman whose mother was a survivor of sexual abuse.The blog post includes an essay that the author wrote three years ago, when she was 17. Liz P talks about her feelings of isolation and the effect that knowing [...]
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 [...]
If you like to read fantasy, fairy tales and books that honestly address issues that child sexual abuse survivors face, you should not miss Tender Morsels by Australian author Margo Lanagan. Loosely based on the Grimm Brothers fairytale Snow White and Rose Red (which is NOT the Snow White of Disney fame), this young adult [...]
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 [...]
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.
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.
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 [...]
Earlier this summer a reader in a small cattle town in a rural Western state wrote a letter on a typewriter and mailed it to my publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York. The letter went on to my editor, Melanie Kroupa, in Boston. She faxed it to me in northwestern California. Here, with [...]
Here's a young adult book to look for. SAFE, by Susan Shaw, won't be out until October, but I'm reading it now in publisher's galleys for a book review. There is no mystery about what happened. Walking home on the last day of 7th grade, Tracy is abducted by an older teen, raped, and left [...]
Have you seen the new young adult novel, Touching Snow, by M. Sindy Felin? It's just been published by Atheneum. The story is bluntly told through the eyes of a teenaged Haitian American girl, Karina, who chronicles her family’s suffering under her despotic stepfather. What I found particularly interesting was the examination of how culture [...]