Silence

By detailing the story of her sexual assault, and the people who refused to believe her account, Crawford's memoir is an act of resistance, and an attempt to break the silence that threatened her life. Immediately following the attack, Crawford chose to keep what the boys had done to her a secret. In Chapter 1, she says she was afraid of losing her new life at St. Paul's, and all it offered. "I was trying to find my place in that moment, and I could not admit to myself that the moment was violent" (10). By secreting the attack, Crawford believed she could protect herself. However, as her depression worsened, she became desperate to escape St. Paul's in an effort to disassociate from her trauma. Her attempts to secure her own expulsion failed, and Crawford was left with "no choice but to fall apart" (70). The author illustrates how victims of...