In response to queries about what I might like as a holiday or upcoming birthday present, I am wondering if I have hit “that age” or developed a stronger sense of being part of the universe?
With the evil spreading in our country that has stripped families apart or made the simple costs of food, shelter and other necessities too expensive for others, how can I want anything? If I need to think about creating a list for days, I think I know the answer
First, my deepest wishes: food, safe shelter, healthcare and education to be accessible in our country. People with compassion, wisdom, morals, the ability to use real language when talking, willingness to listen, commitment to collaborative decisions to lead government at all levels, in all nations. Narcissistic strong men be removed from positions of influence or power.
On the personal level: A giant gift would be securing my family’s futures so that those of us aging don’t burden the younger, the middle generation continue to live the modestly comfortable lives they have achieved, the children reach maturity in a country that has found its way back to peace and prosperity while honoring the Statue of Liberty‘s invitation. It would be grand to find a small house for our last decades and free our family home for a family.
But if my stumbling over the gift question is about approaching “that age” and actual physical items must be named, my gift list is simple: warm socks, two books, a box of English Toffee, framed photos, individual time with each family member in the coming year, donations made to food shelves.
Add new pajamas and a couple of white long sleeve polo shirts, this might have been my father’s list twenty years ago when he was the age I am now. And he is a good reminder of what holiday presents should include. He was someone who gave to others at holidays: food boxes we packed, a canned ham, cookies we baked, wrapped toys, sweaters and pajamas for others’ children, cash in a card, and because it was Wisconsin sometimes a bottle of brandy.
Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, sits prominently displayed on my coffee table. It’s not an illustration book of art, travel, or architecture. It’s not a photo book of exotic animals.
Sad Tiger is a powerful memoir that weaves Neige Sinno’s memory of sexual abuse and reflects upon literary works by authors who were abused and authors who wrote about abuse.
It’s the most complete book about abuse that I have read. It’s my story. My all-embracing 4-year-old, 9-year-old, teenager, and adult self-story.
Underlined sentences mark the early pages, but soon it became expeditious for me to place a vertical line in the margins highlighting entire passages. When I had an especially strong reaction to a passage, my vertical line became an elongated bold exclamation mark.
Emotion would build in me, and I’d write in the margin. There was no order or plan for my discourse. A conversation with myself, my mother, a memory would drive me to write in the top, sides, and bottom margins. Words would be vertical, horizontal or slanted, near the author’s words that elicited the feelings.
I didn’t start out knowing that this book was going to be displayed on my coffee table. I didn’t intend to write or make any notations in the author’s memoir.
It was instinctive, like breathing. On the first paragraph I underlined, “Even if you’ve not experienced it, the traumatic amnesia, the bewilderment, the silence of the victim is something we can all imagine or think we can.”
In the second paragraph, when she wrote about the perpetrator’s assumed experience, I asked, Really that’s what it was like?
Her words rang true. “… And after it’s over, getting dressed, going back to family life as if nothing had happened. And once the madness has taken hold, doing it again, doing it again and again, for years.”
I was in awe, too, that my family could go on as if nothing had happened. The sexual abuse, the violence, the awful words said quietly, shouted, or screamed. Survival was day by day, moment by moment. Wary and alert, vigilance didn’t stop the abuse. I could never escape but I could steel my body to not feel when it came. Even today, 51 years later, I can easily recall my stomach dropping and my impending sense of dread when I realized that I was trapped in a car in the middle of winter on a remote road. My older brother forced me to the back seat. We were supposed to be going to my beloved Aunt’s house—the reason I agreed that I would ride along. A gunshot sounded. No, I realized, with his weight pushing down on me, it was a tree limb snapping from the extreme cold. I don’t even remember if we made it to my aunt’s or what we did once we arrived.
I hear my brothers’ saying, Why are you still writing about this? (As if we were ever really going to have a conversation about their assaults). I answer, Fuck you. It’s mine to write. You shouldn’t have fucking raped me if you didn’t want me to write about it.
“A person rapes in order to exist,” I underlined. I have long thought that my oldest brothers raped me to have some semblance of power in the family. A response to the chaos of our life with our alcoholic father, our mother, and the on-going bedlam of being farm poor with 11 other siblings. Calamity struck every few years. Our barn burnt down when I was in 3rd grade. A few years later, our house burnt down. It wasn’t if something was going to happen, it was always when. My belief was they raped me because they could.
I pressed pen to paper, Where were you, Mother? How could you not know? I wish someone had saved me! I wish someone cared enough. Was brave enough. Had the courage to confront what was easily seen.
In the end, I saved myself and my three younger sisters. Like the author, I reported the abuse to the police when I was 19. I was afraid that my mother wouldn’t protect them, the same as she didn’t protect me. I would never have forgiven myself if I allowed it to happen to my sisters. I was no longer at home, mothering them, protecting them.
And like Sinno, I am drawn towards books written by survivors. She says:
“Many books are published every year by survivors. Mostly fiction. Whenever I come across one, I always like to flip through it. Some are well written, some not. Either way I read them with the same eye. I am looking for a description of the facts. I want to know exactly what he did, how many times, where, what he said, and so on.” Same, I wrote in the margin.
I came across her book, Sad Tiger, in The New York Times book review section, May 2025. Sinno has said that Sad Tiger was written “out of necessity”, as an act of survival and understanding. Writing it was a way to reclaim her own story – to move from being the “object” of violence to the “subject” who names it.
House of Fire: A Story of Love, Courage, and Transformation is a book that I had to write. The sexual abuse that happened to me isn’t me. It was done to me. It doesn’t define me. With writing House of Fire and telling my story, I brought the truth into the light and claimed my freedom. I cut the cord that bound me to my family and found me.
Keeping quiet about abuse lets abusers win and minimizes your own life. Says, I’m not important. I’m not as important as the abuser. As the pedophile.
Fuck you, I say.
I love my life. There’s a deep peace in sitting on my deck, listening to chimes as leaves whisper and clouds float through the blue sky. I am in the moment, knowing my truth, living my truth, and speaking my truth.
I’m immensely proud of who I am. Who I always was. A fighter with a belief in myself.
I don’t write so that the abuse disappears. It will never disappear. It’s in my bones. My thoughts. My world. My very cells.
An elongated bold exclamation mark highlights one of the author’s final sentences, “Like so many others I was raped, I was defiled and betrayed at an age when all you have is trust, and yet I grew up to become an adult who has not raped or defiled or betrayed another person in return.”
Same. With my wife, I’ve raised two children to adulthood. Slowly, intentionally, I made my body mine again. For so long my body was numb to pain and my tears stayed locked away. Now they flow easily. That is the work of love.
I have a coffee book that’s all about me, my travels, my journey, and it sits next to mine.
I was sad to hear a book group friend say her 11-year old-granddaughter didn’t consider it a treat to go to a bookstore to choose a book—she doesn’t read books. I was slow to realize the books I’d been gifting my 10-year-old niece weren’t a hit. Not because I’d chosen boring stories but because she doesn’t enjoy reading. It saddens me they won’t have the pleasure of being immersed in the imaginary worlds I have so enjoyed.
Although it sounds counterintuitive, fiction presents truths through the lives of made-up people.
I’ve learned about worlds I wouldn’t have access to any other way. Through novels, I’ve entered the lives of a Black Texas Ranger, an 15th century Chinese physician, an escaped enslaved woman, a modern-day reporter in India, Korean deep-sea divers, and more. I’ve gained insight and empathy by seeing cultures beyond my own and feeling the dilemmas of people unlike me. Memoirs also offer me inspiration and perspective for my own life.
Recently, the disinterest in reading novels and the related inability to read whole books has been receiving attention. Several theories may explain the change.
That puzzles me, because TV and movies still engage us. With “Game of Thrones,” “Succession,” or “Slow Horses,” viewers enter into invented worlds and can track the plot and characters, so why not in novels and memoirs, whether paper or Kindle books? Perhaps nonreaders have lost the ability to imagine. With TV and movies, the visuals are supplied.
Shorter attention spans are also part of the problem, and students aren’t alone in this. Myriad distractions clamor for our attention and our culture serves up lots of information in short bits—texts, Instagram posts, 35- to 50-word news summaries. In 20 minutes, I might read a dozen short clips instead of one 3,000-word article. Constant interruptions have diminished my powers of concentration. I can still enjoy a 400-page novel, but these days, I get restless and impatient with longer novels.
I learned to love reading whole stories as a girl when there were far fewer distractions. At 8 years old, I draped myself across an upholstered chair and devoured Nancy Drew mysteries. By 14, it was Daphne duMaurier. Often, I wonder about the characters in novels I’m reading and am eager to find out what happens next.
I wish my niece, my friend’s granddaughter, and their peers could experience the gift of being immersed in good books. The joy of being transported to another time or culture. The hours of pleasure, escape, and knowledge.
