Dear sister Letters from survivors of sexual violence

Book - 2014

"Lessons, memories, and vision of over forty artists, activists, mothers, writers, and students who share a common bond: they are survivors of sexual violence. Written in an epistolary format, this multi-generational, multi-ethnic collection of letters and essays is a moving journey into the hearts and minds of the survivors of rape, incest, and other forms of sexual violence, written directly to and for other survivors."--P. [4] of cover.

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362.76/Dear
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Subjects
Published
Edinburgh : AK Press [2014]
[Place of publication not identified] : [2014]
Language
English
Spanish
Other Authors
Aishah Shahidah Simmons (-)
Physical Description
246 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm
ISBN
9781849351720
  • Foreword
  • Introduction & Editor's Note
  • What Every Survivor Needs to Know
  • The Secret of Me
  • Letter 1. Keep Breathing
  • Letter 2. What I Should Have Been Told
  • Letter 3. It Wasn't Your Fault
  • Letter 4. Your Light
  • Letter 5. I Believe You
  • Letter 6. Putting It Beside You
  • Dirty Laundry: An Interview with Zöe Flowers
  • You Don't Owe It to Anyone Else to Report
  • A Child Re-members
  • Memory 1999
  • Untitled, Sketch
  • I'm There Again
  • Letter 7. The Spiral
  • Letter 8. I Am
  • Letter 9. Against All Odds
  • Attic
  • Feminine Wiles
  • Family Ties
  • Letter 10. Fifty-Eight Years, Anonymous
  • Letter 11. I Can't Leave the Brothers Out
  • Letter 12. Oh, Evil Day!, brownfemipower
  • Letter 13. The Aftershock
  • Letter 14. Amita's Fine
  • From Trauma to Strength
  • Surviving Birth
  • Smooth as Scales
  • From One Survivor to Another
  • A Letter to My Rapist
  • Para todo lo que se marcho / For All That Left Her
  • Another Post About Rape
  • Transformative & Disability Justice
  • Badass Resilience Black and Brown Femme Survivor Affirmations
  • Radical Companionship
  • Letter 15. Special
  • Letter 16. Light, Shala Bennett
  • Letter 17. A Sad Song No More
  • The Pearl
  • Letter 18. An Hourly Reckoning Rebecca Wyllie de
  • Echeverria An Unlikeable Survivor
  • Sister to Sister
  • Letter 19. I See You
  • In North Kivu
  • Survival Season
  • Choose Your Own Adventure
  • Surviving Abuse as a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel
  • Letter 20. A Jeans-Wearing Dreamer
  • I Ache
  • Letter 21. Survictim
  • Awakening
  • Our Ancestors Were Watching
  • The Place of Forgiveness: A Conversation
  • What If
  • The Hike to Again
  • Contributor Bios
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This chilling, heartbreaking, and necessary collection consists of letters from 40 artists, activists, writers, and students, who are survivors of sexual assault and here offer counsel to "sister" survivors. Every story is shadowed by the teller's sense of shame, brokenness, depression, and pain, but at the same time, in anticipation of the addressees' experience of sexual assault, the letters also offer comfort, solidarity, reassurance, the possibility of healing, and testimony of survival. Unquestionably moving, the letters often take an expected trajectory, though some selections elevate the collection into surprising, critical territory. "Feminine Wiles" shows femininity reclaimed as a weapon that ensures safety. "Letter 12" and "Another Post About Rape" insightfully discuss the ways in which women are socially "groomed" to be sexual prey. "An Unlikable Survivor" provides helpful balance to the collection, arguing that contrary to the usual story of transcendence, sometimes damage has its consequences, and though many are able to transform experience, some women are rightly, unapologetically angry: "We have not gained some divine likeability by virtue of being survivors. We are not all Mother Theresa trying to save the world." There is much power in this telling. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved