O Mother, Where Art Thou?

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno
Consent by Vanessa Springora
“You Won’t Get Free of It” by Rachel Aviv
“Alice Munro’s Retreat” by Anne Enright
“My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him” by Andrea Skinner

Voicing experiences of childhood sexual abuse counteracts the techniques perpetrators use to sustain their patterns of criminal abuse; namely, silencing the victim and controlling the narrative about what happened. Sad Tiger, by Neige Sinno, recently published in an English translation by Natasha Lehrer, is an intelligent hybrid of survivor memoir and literary criticism. A sensation when published in France, it was shortlisted for the 2023 Prix Goncourt, and joins Consent, by Vanessa Springora, as well as the unbound story of Andrea Skinner, daughter of Alice Munro, as told through essays and letters, to correct the record of each of their girlhoods.