A few days after a New York jury found Hollywood super-producer Harvey Weinstein guilty of two felony sex crimes, author Laurie Halse Anderson was at a writers’ retreat in the Poconos thinking about the thing she is always asked to think about. The subject was sexual assault, but for once, the news from the #MeToo front did not make her want to scream. Although shouting from the rooftops was definitely an option.
“What was so satisfying was that we are finally seeing a court trial that results in a verdict on some of the charges that will result in jail time,” Anderson said of the Feb. 24 verdict. “Equally important to me, given my background, is that the women who were the victims and survivors had enough strength and confidence to stand up in court and say what happened. It was a wonderful example of showing that there is no shame in being a victim of sexual violence.
“As frustrating as it can be to look at the entrenched acceptance of sexual violence, in the year since ‘Shout’ came out, we have seen significant change. And that is positive.”
Released last spring and out in paperback, “Shout” is a memoir that uses poetry to tell the true story behind “Speak,” Anderson’s breakthrough young-adult novel about a high-school freshman who is struggling to put her life back together after she is raped by an older classmate.
In “Shout,” Anderson reveals that she was raped by an older boy when she was 13. Like many perpetrators, the boy was not a stranger. Like many survivors, Anderson didn’t tell a soul about what happened.
Not her parents, not the police, not her friends.
No one.
For 23 years.
But in the mid-1990s, Anderson finally told a therapist. And then, she told the world in the only way she could at the time.
Anderson wrote “Speak” while she was working as a freelance journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and raising two young daughters. She wrote in early-morning bursts, in the quiet time before the kids woke up and her day job began. The book was rejected by one publisher, and even after it got the green light elsewhere, Anderson’s agent warned her not to expect too much.
A book about a sexual assault — who would want to read that?
The answer turned out to be many, many people of all ages, genders and backgrounds.
The book was published in 1999. It became a bestseller and an award winner while also making frequent appearances on the American Library Association’s “frequently challenged” books list. It also turned Anderson into an expert on a topic she had spent decades trying not to think about at all. And in “Shout,” you can see how the silent survivor became a truth warrior.
“When I started speaking at schools years ago, I thought I was supposed to talk about metaphors and other English-teacher stuff, but no kid wanted to hear that. They wanted to know what happened to me,” said Anderson, whose “Shout” book tour was canceled due to health issues. “I got very comfortable with talking about what happened to me and what happened with my family. I made my peace with all that.”
In “Shout,” Anderson’s beautifully crafted poems expose dark family secrets and her own trauma to the healing light of day. We hear about the wartime violence that left her father with a hair-trigger temper and a drinking problem. We hear about the domestic violence that turned her mother into the household’s other abuser. We hear about the older, damaged “tobacco-smelling boy” who starts out as a friend and turns into a rapist.
“Looking back, I think his life was a mess,” Anderson writes. “Looking back, he still scares me.”
We watch as Anderson numbs herself with pot and dangerous friends and finds solace in books and in her foreign-exchange visit to Denmark. We see her survive and thrive and become the author of “Speak,” whereupon she becomes the keeper of many survivor stories, many of which make their way into “Shout.” Anderson’s poetic memoir would go on to become a bestseller and be named a Book of the Year by NPR, Publishers Weekly, TIME magazine and many others.
But first, Anderson had to get mad enough to speak up for herself. And we have Harvey Weinstein to thank for that.
“I never thought about writing this book until I was listening to a podcast about the backlash to the #MeToo movement, and my rage crystallized in a way that I don’t think it ever had before. I think it probably had a lot to do with the fact that I’m a woman of a certain age, and I have come into my rage,” said Anderson, who turns 59 in October.
Laurie Halse Anderson spoke up, and now, she will never hear the end of it. And she is more than OK with that.
