And I didn't have a model of what it looked like to talk about. That's why we turn to stories - to look for models of how to do things. On how hard it can be for survivors to communicate their experiences Your purchase helps support NPR programming. It took a couple of months of conversations with my therapist before I felt safe and secure enough with that relationship, and then my life changed the day I opened up and started to speak about what happened.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Shout Author Laurie Halse Anderson It's funny how it's easier sometimes to get help in order so you can help somebody else. I was kind of a mess and I recognized that I was not being a great mom to my children. The person I told first was my therapist. I was raped when I was 13 and it took me exactly 23 years. On how long it took her to talk about her own assault Just like the reader can take a breath in between poems when they are reading a book, as a writer, I was able to step back sometimes and put the work aside, go for a long walk, and not have to worry about losing the narrative through thread. When you're talking about a marrow experience - like an experience that touches your bone marrow - you want to use the strongest platform you can, and for me, that was poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was a little girl. "If you can bear up underneath the weight, it makes you stronger." Though this surprised her at first, Anderson says she does not feel weighed down by their accounts. When Anderson speaks to student groups about sexual assault and consent, she finds young survivors will often open up to her about their own experiences. The book begins: "This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one." In her new memoir, Shout, Anderson reveals that she was raped when she was 13, and it took more than two decades before she could find the words to talk or write about it. It's been 20 years since Anderson's groundbreaking novel Speak was published - it tells the story of Melinda, a freshman in high school who stops speaking after a sexual assault. "If there was a way for every victim of sexual violence to come forward on one day, I think the world would stop spinning for a day," she says. "I translate imagination onto the page," she says.įor every sexual assault survivor who speaks out, Laurie Halse Anderson knows there many others remaining silent. In college, Laurie Halse Anderson thought she might become a translator - and in a way, she did.
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