ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with five memoirs of child sexual abuse in order to examine the production, circulation, and meaning of silence in the experiences of survivors. This chapter critically engages with understandings of silence to examine its capacities for agency as well as disavowal and exclusion. It examines three themes that emerge in memoirs: the speaking body; the disbelieving or rejection of survivors’ experiences; and the inherited cultures of silence around sexual abuse. Paper Cuts by Stephen Bernard (2018), Sheila Tucker's Rag Dolls and Rage (2019), One Small Word by Gloria Eveleigh (2018), Alan Davies's Just Ignore Him (2020), and Coming Undone by Terri White (2020). Overall, this chapter argues that silence might be constructively reinterpreted as a refusal to listen rather than a lack of voice.
