A home without secrets or lies on family & writing poems of childhood sexual assault

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this short memoir, the author uses personal narrative, research, and popular literature to analyze her first book of poetry on childhood sexual assault and the social consequences of choosing to write a trauma narrative. As the author shows, writing her first book was an intuitive experiment of poetic therapy as well as an intellectual engagement with an artistic medium that becomes, through its production and publication, an example of the psychological benefits of writing these narratives while also inspiring negative familial responses. Drawing from the voices of other writers, this memoir argues that survivors of assault should write their experiences despite negative social responses, contending that the emotional and psychological benefits of doing so well outweigh social invalidation. Shame is examined as an inevitable consequence of assault that can be confronted through the act of writing, and memory as an unreliable resource the writer must choose to trust.