Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival

In this richly depicted story, told in vignettes relative to markers of age and experience, Patricia Eagle reveals the heartbreak and destruction of her sexual abuse, from age four to thirteen, by her father. A victim of her father's anger and her mother's complacency with his abusive behavior, Eagle uses dissociation and numbing in response to the abuse, and as a way to block her own sense of self.

How does a child confused by episodes of abuse come to know what is safe or unsafe, right or ...