bella_and_the_bookstack's review
4.0
4 out of 5 stars
This book was painful to read. I could feel the pain that Lacy Crawford felt when writing this. I want to say firstly how brave Crawford was to share such a painful experience. It hurt to see how she was treated as a young girl. It hurt even more to see how readily everyone was to sweep her horrors under the rug.
Lacy Crawford wrote a heart-wrenching memoir detailing her schooling and eventual rape at St. Paul's School. Despite the difficulties it must have taken to write such a book, Crawford shared the details of her brutal attack and the events following. It is so shameful and abhorrent that such a thing could have happened to anyone, let alone a child. The cover up implemented by the school was shocking. Not only did they try to silence Lacy, but they also slandered her name and reputation. The complete lack of concern of her (and other students) enrolled at St. Paul's was truly sickening.
Notes On A Silencing was such an important book. I struggled at times with the writing, as the first half of the book is written in a non-linear format. There were times when I became confused on which events had already occured and what was set later on. The writing would break off randomly from one timeline to discuss things on another. However, the writing flowed easily enough throughout the rest of the book.
Thank you, thank you to Lacy Crawford for sharing your story with the world. You are such a strong, brave woman.
This book was painful to read. I could feel the pain that Lacy Crawford felt when writing this. I want to say firstly how brave Crawford was to share such a painful experience. It hurt to see how she was treated as a young girl. It hurt even more to see how readily everyone was to sweep her horrors under the rug.
Lacy Crawford wrote a heart-wrenching memoir detailing her schooling and eventual rape at St. Paul's School. Despite the difficulties it must have taken to write such a book, Crawford shared the details of her brutal attack and the events following. It is so shameful and abhorrent that such a thing could have happened to anyone, let alone a child. The cover up implemented by the school was shocking. Not only did they try to silence Lacy, but they also slandered her name and reputation. The complete lack of concern of her (and other students) enrolled at St. Paul's was truly sickening.
Notes On A Silencing was such an important book. I struggled at times with the writing, as the first half of the book is written in a non-linear format. There were times when I became confused on which events had already occured and what was set later on. The writing would break off randomly from one timeline to discuss things on another. However, the writing flowed easily enough throughout the rest of the book.
Thank you, thank you to Lacy Crawford for sharing your story with the world. You are such a strong, brave woman.
barryjensmith's review
Too much sexual content for me
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment
fanchera's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Gaslighting, Body shaming, Toxic friendship, Misogyny, Sexual content, Panic attacks/disorders, Death, Bullying, Sexual assault, Rape, Sexual harassment, Violence, Sexual violence, Self harm, Pedophilia, Grief, and Abandonment
kellyzen's review
4.0
In bearing witness, we’re trying to correct a theft of power via a story. But power and stories, while deeply interconnected, are not the same things. One is rock, the other is water. Over time, long periods of time, water always wins. What I want to know, even now, is: how?
kelseywaters's review
5.0
This memoir was incredibly powerful. It opens with the scene of Lacy’s sexual assault, but told from an outsider’s perspective. As you read through her years at St Paul’s, you understand the assault in so many different layers: what led up to it, the aftermath, the silencing, the long term effects.
It is brutal and painful, and feels so necessary that it be read.
I feel wildly grateful to all the survivors who continue to bear witness and fight the complete bullshit of a system that protects everyone but them. The amount of educating and pushing through that survivors have had to do continues to make things just a little safer for others, but the trauma and sacrifice they’ve experienced is too much for me to ever comprehend.
A couple excerpts:
“It’s so simple, what happened at St Paul’s. It happens all the time.
First, they refused to believe me. Then they shamed me. Then they silenced me. On balance, if this is a girl’s trajectory from dignity to disappearance, I say it is better to be a slut than to be silent. I believe, in fact, that the slur “slut” carries within it, Trojan-horse style, silence as it’s true intent. That the opposite of “slut” is not virtue but voice.” (P381-382).
“Here is the most generous gift of speaking up, of ‘coming forward,’ as they say, and it’s a wildly gracious turn: that my story might cause others not to hear my voice but might allow them, perhaps for the first time, to hear their own.” (P 406).
“You are a reliable witness to your own experience.” Lacy Crawford on “The Courageously.u podcast with Tara Bixby”
It is brutal and painful, and feels so necessary that it be read.
I feel wildly grateful to all the survivors who continue to bear witness and fight the complete bullshit of a system that protects everyone but them. The amount of educating and pushing through that survivors have had to do continues to make things just a little safer for others, but the trauma and sacrifice they’ve experienced is too much for me to ever comprehend.
A couple excerpts:
“It’s so simple, what happened at St Paul’s. It happens all the time.
First, they refused to believe me. Then they shamed me. Then they silenced me. On balance, if this is a girl’s trajectory from dignity to disappearance, I say it is better to be a slut than to be silent. I believe, in fact, that the slur “slut” carries within it, Trojan-horse style, silence as it’s true intent. That the opposite of “slut” is not virtue but voice.” (P381-382).
“Here is the most generous gift of speaking up, of ‘coming forward,’ as they say, and it’s a wildly gracious turn: that my story might cause others not to hear my voice but might allow them, perhaps for the first time, to hear their own.” (P 406).
“You are a reliable witness to your own experience.” Lacy Crawford on “The Courageously.u podcast with Tara Bixby”
sadiereadsagain's review
4.0
Lacey was a student at a prestigious New England boarding school, when at just 15 she was sexually assaulted by two older students. When the school were forced to acknowledge what had happened, they took steps to silence Lacey and basically threatened her education and her reputation. It was only decades later, when other allegations came out concerning the school, that she saw evidence to exactly the depths the school had sank in order to protect its own reputation above the safety of the students in its care. So she wrote this memoir to share her experience of both being an assault victim and a victim of a callous cover-up.
In this memoir, Lacey is both open and eloquent (which is key to a good memoir for me) about not only the abuse that she suffered, but how it impacted on her sense of self and the changes in her behavior as she struggled to come to terms with it. The school is a microclimate made toxic by gender double standards of sexuality, and because it's quite an elite school there is an ingrained culture of upholding the outward appearances of the upper class WASP-y society. So victim blaming is rife, and this was just among the students. When the school can no longer ignore what has happened to Lacey, this victim blaming becomes amplified in the lack of punishment for the perpetrators and the threatened banishment of Lacey. I think she captures perfectly the atmosphere and the attitudes of those around her, both as she experienced them as a 15 year old and then applying the hindsight of her adult views as well.
It's just a deeply sad look at how privilege isn't even equal at the higher levels of society when it comes to violence against women, and how the impact of such trauma can manifest itself in ways that simply fuel victim blaming in the eyes of those who refuse to understand that there is no playbook for how someone should behave or how they should handle such an experience. It also highlights, at least in this school, how reputation is honoured more than even the safety of children, and the extent to which those in control would go to protect it, how easy the system makes it for them to do so.
In this memoir, Lacey is both open and eloquent (which is key to a good memoir for me) about not only the abuse that she suffered, but how it impacted on her sense of self and the changes in her behavior as she struggled to come to terms with it. The school is a microclimate made toxic by gender double standards of sexuality, and because it's quite an elite school there is an ingrained culture of upholding the outward appearances of the upper class WASP-y society. So victim blaming is rife, and this was just among the students. When the school can no longer ignore what has happened to Lacey, this victim blaming becomes amplified in the lack of punishment for the perpetrators and the threatened banishment of Lacey. I think she captures perfectly the atmosphere and the attitudes of those around her, both as she experienced them as a 15 year old and then applying the hindsight of her adult views as well.
It's just a deeply sad look at how privilege isn't even equal at the higher levels of society when it comes to violence against women, and how the impact of such trauma can manifest itself in ways that simply fuel victim blaming in the eyes of those who refuse to understand that there is no playbook for how someone should behave or how they should handle such an experience. It also highlights, at least in this school, how reputation is honoured more than even the safety of children, and the extent to which those in control would go to protect it, how easy the system makes it for them to do so.