This memoir is electric.
This writing of hard truths is so important.
As with her powerful, award winning young adult novel SPEAK, the author shares her story of sexual violence, a tidal wave that immersed her two weeks before high school and sent crashing waves and ripples throughout the rest of her life. Refusing to drown, she wrote. She writes. She speaks. — Nancy Scheemaker
In her collection’s penultimate poem, “say my name,” Laurie Halse Anderson lists words, such as 'faults,' that rhyme with her maternal-familial name, to show how it’s pronounced, because despite her writing’s great importance for how she ‘spoke’ out on sexual violence against women, her name, Halse, continues to be 'mispoken,' testament to the lack of respect our culture affords women, which she images anew in these poems. — Ray Marsocci
“Laurie Halse Anderson invites readers not to speak but to shout in her new poetry memoir, a long-awaited follow-up to her bestselling YA novel Speak, which centers around a survivor of sexual assault. In SHOUT, Anderson shares memories from her young adulthoodwhen she herself was raped and how she found the strength to keep going. Between autobiographical poems lie fierce rants about rape culture and censorship, as well as love letters and encouragement to survivors of sexual assault. SHOUT is a fist raised to the sky, arriving on the heels of #MeToo and urging readers to never be silenced. A must-read.”
— Mary Wahlmeier, Raven Book Store, Lawrence, KS