Art After Sexual Assault
May, 2019
Few things are more excruciating for a writer than confronting the words written by her younger self. Her tone is bound to seem stilted, her thoughts alien or insignificant. Did I really think that? she wonders, aghast. Worse yet: Did I really commit it to paper? Ensure that my words would come back to shame me in the future? As Jane Austen well knew, the real pleasure in reading one’s “Juvenilia” or “Scraps” comes from measuring the distance between talent and art.…