Shout and Speak Out Loud: Atlantic Canadians on Child Sexual Abuse

Marcia Sweet is head of the Information/Reference Unit, Douglas Library,
Queen’s University.

Anthologies are always difficult to review. It’s impossible to talk
about every piece, so one tries to assess how well the anthologists have
met their own challenge. This book succeeds well in encouraging victims
of child sexual abuse to talk about what happened to them as an aid to
healing. It is remarkable that the pieces are so readable: they utilize
usual literary devices—metaphor, indirection, and the like—in prose
and poetry to express powerful personal reactions to a regrettably
common experience.

Wisely, the editors have included accounts of the abuse of boys
(notably a gripping story, “Caught,” by Raymond Fraser; and a
typically direct and moving poem, “my first job,” by bill bissett),
which remind us that child sexual abuse is not only a feminist issue but
a human problem. All of the authors use common terminology to express
their experiences: death, division, fear, complicity, dirtiness,
and—over and over—the loss of the innocence of childhood.

The strength of this collection is that most of the pieces, while
angry, highlight the inner fortitude that the writers summon to help
them to move forward. As Claudia Gahlinger writes so eloquently in “A
Day in the Life of a Warrior, or Safe in the Body of the Goddess,”
“I’ve harnessed the power they had over me. Suffering their lips on
my girl’s nipples taught me detachment. Silence through the nights of
atrocity taught me fortitude. Testing the world for safety sharpened my
wits.”

The weakness of the book is that the editors have neither authenticated
the stories nor concealed the names of the alleged victims (and thus, of
course, of the alleged perpetrators). The use of common social-work
jargon by so many authors suggests, possibly incorrectly, that they have
been coached. This book will be thoughtfully read by the many among us
who are acquainted with child sexual abuse.