Shout

“This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.”

Growing up in an insular community, I often felt voiceless as a woman. Because I was afraid to speak up, I found myself resorting to books and stories to understand my place in the world. Whenever I witnessed injustices around me, I curled up inside of a book in an attempt to make sense of them. After years of being silenced, books helped me build the courage to share and tell these stories. This is the triumphant message in Laurie Halse Anderson’s powerful new memoir, Shout.

Written in free verse, Anderson’s deeply personal stories ferociously confront the issues of rape, sexual abuse, and how society treats those who find the courage to speak up. In the book’s first half, Anderson recounts the events in her life that led to the writing of her best-selling novel Speak. The second half, which she calls a manifesto, is her empowering reflection on rape culture and the ways in which sexual violence has become rampant.

Anderson’s language is raw, moving, empowering, and full of anger. It’s as if she is using her words not only to call out injustices, but also to rewrite the narrative of her life. I hope that people will read her book and feel less alone. I know I did.

Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven between deeply personal stories from her life that she's never written about before. Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society's failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts. Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice—and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore.