From Madison Books, Seattle, WA:
[April is] National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which makes this an especially fitting time for us to host author Alle C. Hall. She [was with us Sunday April 16] to read from and discuss her new novel, As Far As You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back. The book follows a young woman on her travels through Asia in the 1980s, and it draws in many ways on Alle’s own experiences. She was kind enough to share some of those with us and even kinder in allowing us to share them with you here:
When I embarked on my healing journey in the late 1980s we weren’t yet called “survivors.” We were victims. In the early 1990s we claimed “survivors.” In 2016 President Obama signed a Presidential Proclamation: National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. In doing so, he wrote, “Too many women and men of all ages suffer the outrage that is sexual assault, and too often this crime is not condemned as loudly as it should be. Together, we must stand up and speak out to change the culture that questions the actions of victims, rather than those of their attackers.”
When #MeToo happened, we began to take sexual harassment and assault seriously. Perpetrators are now being fined, fired, and jailed. Police are trained to believe rape survivors. We acknowledge that incest exists.
I feel so lucky that I bring to the table a novel that can affect readers in their progress through one of the most intimate and difficulat experiences: surviving sexual trauma. To those on the front lines, offering direct support to survivors; to those who work for nonprofits that assist with reformatting our lives as survivors rather than victims; to those who donate money: thank you. I would not be alive without each one of your continued efforts.
For upcoming events with Madison Books, please see their event calendar.