Reviews for Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape

The average rating for Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-19 00:00:00 Liz Abbott "For black women, where rape is concerned, race has preceded issues of gender. We are taught that we are first black, then women. Our families have taught us this, and society in its harsh racial lessons reinforces it. Black women have survived by keeping quiet, not solely out of shame, but out of a need to preserve the race and its image. In our attempts to preserve racial pride, we black women have often sacrificed our own souls." "Some men do not know the story of rape. We have never told them. They have not heard our stories of rape-of our sisters, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. To be exculded is heartbreaking and lonely. Not being told-not knowing-the story of the women in their lives, in their community, must make them feel accused. We must tell them the storries and keep retelling them. Black men need the stories to map a course of action, to become responsible, so sexual violence in our communities might one day cease. Men don;t always know how to ask the right questions. But once they learn, they need us to teach them how to hear the answers. And so, black men have a place here. I have asked them to speak, however briefly. In these men's stories, we have begun a conversation that breaks the other half of the silence." "The way out is to tell: speak the acts prepetrated upon us, speak the atrocities, speak the injustices, speak the personal violations of the soul. Someone will llisten, someone will believe our stories, someone will join us. And until there are more who will bear witness to our truths as black women, we will do it for one another." "Our souls heal on levels, as wounds flesh heal in layers." "My spirit was broken, This must be the way you feel when you're going insanse. The others in the family were fluttering about, making all seem back to normal. They were pretending." "I could feel in his arms his own pain and the desire to take away mine. He didn't know how to comfort me and I didn't know how to explain to him what I needed. How does anyone know what to say to ask or to do? And yet we need them to know." "Healing is a continuous process. Sometimes a struggle. Rape affects all parts of one's life and being, and one has to work continually to become whole and intact." "How self-ansorbed we become when consumed with our own terrors and traumas!" "Black people could be such great help to each other, but because of our silences we can't be. With no sense of community, we end up killing ourselves." "I think in the end it's not just about rape; it's about how we survive rape. It's about how black women were taught to survive. I would say to other women, if rape happens to them, try to think as rationally as you possibly can. I know fear over takes part of you, but I'd say, no matter what, stay alive. Do whatever it takes for you to stay alive. But your decision has to be quick (a loud clap) and positive. It's just like CPR. You can't wait. Stay alive." "We can never know what is lurking in another person's storehouse of trauma. That's why we have to be willing to test the waters until we find what we need-without feeling that somehow we have steeped over an invisible boundry. We must be patient with our male friends, Harriett, and help them to negotiate with us, our very precarious pathway to recovery. We need them to help us heal."

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-13 00:00:00 Lawrence Conrad "There is an uncanny silence surrounding the trauma of black rape." - Charlotte Pierce-Baker, author "We all have free will, but when it comes to black men, all of a sudden everybody blames us -black women- for what goes wrong in our rae. Allof a sudden black men are not responsible for themselves. We have to be responsible for them. Then we're blamed when they go to white women; we're blamed when they kill each other. We're not valued as people to the same degree that other people are valued. Even less so than black men. A professor at the university said in class, in my presence that "you can't get raped unless you go slinking through the ghetto." As if I'm not even a human being. I was sitting there! We're disposable people, black women. I -as a black woman- have feelings. I get angry; I feel delight; I cry myself to sleep. We have the whole range of emotions that anybody else does." - Ruth "Talking about rape is like taboo, and we all know it's taboo." "...for black women it's taboo "to tell"; the brothers are hurting so bad we don't want to hurt 'em anymore. God forbid we should put another worry on them!" - Matilda, twenty-year old college student "White women are usually put up on a pedestal. With the black woman it only takes one smudge, and you carry that smudge with you for the rest of your life. Most white women feel that black women should be used to being raped. When I was going to high school, I went to a racially mixed school. When we got to the Civil War, most of the white girls I went to school with felt that black women enjoyed sleeping with the masters. To me that was something that was passed on to them by their families. I figure that's how the white man justified raping black women back then; it was okay because "they enjoyed it." - Adrienne, forty-year old nurse "...rape is a men's issue. Rape says much more about men than it ever has about women. Rape is a louder statement about masculinity than it is about femininity." - Rus Ervin Funk, Stopping Rape: A Challenge for Men "We thought we could take care of anything ourselves! Our relationship had always been very private. Even our parents weren't privy toeven the remotely intimate parts of our life. I think if we had done therapy together, it would have made a difference. But within our marriage -and our family of three- there was ocmplete silence. I was complicitous, totally, in the silence. It would, somehow...just get better." -David, husband of rape survivor. Speak out - don't remain Silent! Organizations that can help: Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Netwoek (RAINN)