11. Notes on a Silencing

Lacy Crawford. 2020.

Spoiler alert...ok not really.  The opening scene is a graphic rape scene of a young girl in an elite boarding school dorm room by two seniors who are also adult men.  The memoir circles back to this scene in graphic detail over and over in a literary choice that mirror a brain processing this kind of trauma.  While in many ways a brilliant tactic, it is exhausting and feels redundant and burdensome at times.  

The rape and ensuing physical manifestations of the STD she contracted from it are the actually the backdrop, though, for a high school experience marred by the rape, that was bragged about by the boys as a threesome and tarnished the rest of her years at the school.  Her common response to the assault included sexual promiscuity and much of the story is about those experiences, some of which can be described as "bad sex" and some of which are also sexual assaults.  Labeled a "slut," the story explores the inner turmoil of teen isolation and describes how this can lead to a life of overachievement and high functioning as a cover for trauma recovery.

It was difficult to decide whether to recommend this or not, and I was pretty sure it would go in the Not Not Recommended category, primarily because at the end of the day I think the graphicness ended up being a distraction. I am also not a fan of opening with trauma scenes.  It feels like overused and oversimplified literary technique that took away from an otherwise compelling narrative, kind of a cheap trick to suck in the prurient reader.

However, the tone and style of the book changes dramatically in about the last third.  It is much less literary, as it shifts focus to various legal cases and investigations involving the school. I had already decided this was likely as Not Not Recommended book, because of the graphic scenes, but this last second convinced me that I should recommend it, but with a caveat for the violence.  So much of this last part vividly and accurately reflects my experiences with the legal system since the 90's.  The secondary violence of untrained and sometimes uncaring the medical, law enforcement, and legal response to the sexual assault of children is set out here in painful detail that many people will relate to and many, many others would benefit from reading.  So, in the end, I do think this is a recommend.  Book your therapy sessions before you start reading, though.  There is a lot to process here.

Recommend.

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