The story of Alice Sebold’s memoir begins with her as a freshman at Syracuse University and the

Lucky by Alice Sebold’s is a memoir in which she speaks about her traumatic experience that she went through during her freshman year at Syracuse University in New York. Alice was beaten and raped one night when she was walking alone back to her dorm. A black male grabbed her from behind with a knife and told her that he would kill her if she screamed. The black male took Alice into a tunnel where he beat her up and forced her to perform oral sex on him. Alice was still a virgin prior to the rape. After the black male raped Alice, he showed feelings of remorse, he helped Alice put her clothes back on. Alice lied and told him that it was okay and that she forgave him. Alice reports the incident to the police and the officer tells Alice that she should consider herself lucky because a girl had been killed in the same place where she was raped. The rape took a toll on Alice because she seemed to pretend like it was okay when it was not. She started seeing everything differently, every black male she came across she would be reminded of her rapist. Alice also experienced trouble in relationships with men because she did not consider herself to be worthy of any good guy because no guy would want her since she was a rape victim. Alice expressed anger towards her rapist when she runs into him again one afternoon and he approaches her and says that she looked familiar. Alice speaks about wanting to kill her rapist. Alice’s rapist is taken into custody and they have a

The Myth of the Black Rapist, according to Davis’s Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist, “has been methodically conjured up whenever recurrent waves of violence and terror against the Black community have required convincing justifications.” So, a seed would be planted that an African American raped someone in hopes that it would help in their sentencing. It functioned as a form of social control because no one would stand up to support them; even if it was blatantly obvious that this male didn’t rape anyone, no one wanted to go against the “norm.” “The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman-both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continued exploitation of black men and women”

When students are bullied, they are encouraged to speak up about it to a teacher or some other adult; however, many do not, because they may think their cases are not important enough to be told, because no one will believe their stories, or because they are embarrassed by what happened. As these cases turn from simple bullying to a more severe event, this inability to speak up only increases. Laurie Halse Anderson shows this effect with being raped, as well as the emotional damage that goes with it. Through Melinda’s experiences in Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson’s writing reflects the time in which it was written, her views on teens and the adolescent years, and her early life.

At some point in their life, every person has been told to “walk in somebody else’s shoes” because they need to be aware of the struggles that other people face, but it is often tough for people to understand things outside of the scope of their own practical knowledge. In her memoir, Lucky, Alice Sebold suffers from this same problem. Throughout the course of her narrative, Sebold thinks of her experience as something that is accessible to be understood by outsiders; in addition to this, Sebold paints her reactions and experiences as a model that she can apply to other victims of sexual assault. Even though Sebold’s story is one of strength in the face of horrible occurrences, her lack of acknowledgement in regards the ways in which other people’s consciousness and coping mechanisms differ from her own makes it far more difficult to sympathize with her than it should be considering the content of her memoir. Evidence of her closed world understanding can be seen from the beginning of the memoir, when she reports her sexual assault to the police (Sebold, 3), later in the narrative, when other people react to her experiences and related feelings (Sebold 146), and finally, and perhaps most significantly, when her close friend Lila undergoes a sexual assault (Sebold 220).

Cormier timed the revelation of Nicole’s rape to leave the reader in great shock. Through a confirmation scene when Larry rapes Nicole, Cormier reveals the true horror of what Nicole has experienced, left traumatised from the ordeal. This is expressed through her conversations with Francis, where she reveals that she can longer see him, this conflict left both Nicole and Francis emotionally damaged. The reader later discovers that through Nicole’s selfless forgiving, she does not redress her violation and cares more for her parents than her personal suffering. Cormier conveys Nicole as the true unacknowledged genuine hero through the passage of text as she begins to forgive Francis in the last passage of the book. Nicolle is also heroic as she does not pursuit legal actions against Larry in the hope of protection against her family.

Another victim of white on black rape was Betty Jean Owens, she was kidnapped from a school dance and taken into the woods and was gang raped by four white different men. Betty was so hurt from this rape she was sent to the hospital. When the students from the school she attended in Tallahassee, Florida had heard about the rape they were enraged, “Early the next day more than a thousand students gathered in the university’s grassy quadrangle with signs, hymns, and prayers aimed at the national news media, which sent stories of the attack across the country” (McGuire 136). These students were no longer going to sit back and watch the women they love and care about get raped and treated as though they aren’t human. They were letting the world

Alice Sebold’s experience of rape not only caused damage to her own life but also triggered ripple-effect to her friends, her family and many other people in the community. They all played their roles in this event and reacted differently.

839) Due to the trauma of being raped by her father's murderer Sally at that time began to have trust issues with most adults. In her mind it was her father who was providing not only for her physical needs, but her emotional needs as well. After his murder she did not feel the same sense of nurturing or safety with her mother.

The quest first begins to take shape when it is revealed that the reason for Melinda’s social ostracism is that she broke up a party that took place during the summer by calling the cops (Anderson 27). Although at the time it is not revealed why, later it is discovered that her call to police was a call for help as a reaction to the assault but immediately after the event she is unable to tell the operator what happened (Anderson 136). This inability to speak about the assault and Melinda’s attempt to overcome it appears again when she writes to Rachel about the rape and inform her that it was her boyfriend who was her rapist. However, despite this being the first time she confides in someone about what happened, she is immediately lambasted and called a liar by Rachel (Anderson 183-4). By the end of the novel she is finally ready to speak about and to verbalize what happened to her on the night of the assault.

In the novel, Kindred, Butler shows that race is not the only factor in the power hierarchy between white men and black women in the story. Gender plays just as a significant role in power than race. We, the readers, see how white women like Margaret Weylin are seen as inferior to their husbands, who have a public presence in society and can do as they please. In addition, society expects them to be nothing more than wives and mothers. On the other hand, black women are constantly victimized and treated inhumanly even till the present but in more subtle forms. This is shown with the treatment of 20th century women like Dana who still seemed to be undermined by white men like Kevin, who is shown to reinforce patriarchal values through his treatment of her. Moreover, it is repeatedly shown in the novel that 19th century black women were even more oppressed than their white counterparts as they are deprived of their basic roles as mothers and wives and even indiscriminately raped. Due to their gender and race, black women had their human rights rescinded and were subject to even worse condition than black men. In the novel, when Dana gets back to the present after being away from Rufus for fifteen days, she recounts her horrific experience to Kevin. She states, “You mean you could forgive me for having been raped?” (245). Dana is in a state of disbelief when Kevin insinuates that he could forgive an intimate act with Rufus if she has been raped by him in the past. This comment

What if someone was raped and nobody knew about it? In the novel Speak by Laurie H. Anderson, Melinda’s art project was to draw a tree which symbolizes her struggle to heal. First of all, Melinda draws a tree that is struck by lightning, which symbolizes her struggling relationships with her friends. Secondly, she also proves she is struggling through her failing grades. At the end of the novel, Melinda draws a tree which is not perfect, but is alive, which symbolizes her healing process. She shows she is recovering by standing up for herself, and confronting her old friends.

A trait that stands out in the book is the symptom of bodily memories. In Melinda’s case, during a frog dissection in her science class, she remembers the opening up and even says, “She doesn’t say a word. She is already dead. A scream starts in my gut – I can feel the cut, smell the dirt, feel the leaves in my hair.” (81). One of the other symptoms that Melinda has is self-harm. The first time that this is shown in the book, Melinda says this, “I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep?” (87). Melinda also has a hard time talking to her parents about the rape to which she says, “How can I talk to them about that night? How can I start?” (72). Some victims recover from such a traumatic experience, while others don’t and live a lifetime of depression and must undergo intense therapy. In Melinda’s case, she finds redemption by talking to her parents and the guidance counselor, and putting her faith into her teachers, friends, and her art project at school. Because rape can affect anybody anywhere, everyone should be aware of the circumstances, and how to deal with it.

Kamilah Willingham, a victim of rape at Harvard University was questioned about not fighting her attacker who is over 200 pounds with a height of about 6’3 according to the victim. She was also questioned about their friendship, that maybe her attacker confused their friendship with something more than just a friendship. Caroline Heldman, a professor at Occidental College mentioned that victim-blaming has a silencing effect on survivors. Lack of action from university

Nevertheless, Cunegonde is not the only woman to accept her experiences. When the Old Woman is describing her history, she begins telling the story of the first time she was raped, but interrupts stating, “let us pass on; these are such common things as not to be worth mentioning” (25). This shows how indifferent the Old Woman was to such sexual exploitation during this time. She even explains at the end of her disturbing story that she refuses to hold any self-pity, and was only sharing her story simply “to pass away the time” (29).

Patricia Lockwood’s The Rape Joke is a risky composition- not because it discloses information about Lockwood’s personal rape experience, but because it does so from a comedic stance, ridiculing the unfortunate event and the events leading up to and after it. While the creation of the poem was prompted due to the sexual assault she experienced, the content and subject are not centered around the incident or the assaulter but around rape culture and the sociological concept of victim blaming, from both society and oneself. There is no such thing as a rape joke-the joke is the incredulous ways society has guided people to respond to it.