Monday, December 23, 2024

Writing what can't be named: sexual abuse from the literary perspective

I have recently read three novels - two of them autofiction - that deal with child sexual abuse as their central theme. In all three, the abuser was an adult male and the victim was a teenage girl.

Before I go any further, I must warn you that I was not looking for books dealing with this subject, but that they came to me by chance; in fact, if you don't read their titles it is very difficult to know what they are about. This leads me to think that, unfortunately, sexual abuse against minors is a crime that occurs, almost always with total impunity, throughout the world, but that my women, sometimes until they reach adulthood and fully understand what happened to them, are reporting it. And that is always a good thing, because the abuse of children is a crime that is committed by women.