Date Finished - Mar 16, 2011
In a raw and luminous voice, Chris Abani's novella "Becoming Abigail" is the story of a young Nigerian woman whisked away to London by her Uncle and sold into prostitution. The scene's in this novella are very graphic and Mr. Abani takes us into Abigail's world of grief and betrayal. I don't want to give too much away, since this is a book to be savored despite it's wrenching narrative. Nothing short but memorable.
Date Finished - Mar 4, 2011
A life can change either in an instant or in a few hours. For Liz Seccuro in one night, her world was shattered by her brutal rape by another University of Virginia student in 1984. Years later, Liz who is happily married and a mother of a young girl is contacted by William Beebe, the same man who raped her apologizing for his crime. So begins "Crash Into Me", a brutally raw, unflinching, and harrowing memoir. After she was raped, she was failed justice by UVA who swept it under the rug as did the brotherhood of the sorority in which the crime took place. By the end, you will feel anger at the failure of a broken system and cheer for Liz Seccuro's strength and fearless courage on behalf of rape survivors everywhere.
