rape

In the past year, rapes in the city of Dallas have increased 25.3%. Seriously. Such a huge increase of reported rapes would be shocking anywhere, but in a city where crime of all sorts is down 6.3%, a 25.3% jump in rape is astounding. At a Public Safety Committee meeting on Monday, though, Police Chief David Brown came up with a brilliant solution to decrease the number of rapes in the city. Not really though.

Yesterday Lisa from A Woman's Ecdysis sent me a call for submissions to an anthology she is editing, called Dear Sister: Letters to Survivors of Sexual Violence.

Lisa wrote:

I encourage you all to submit and forward this call widely. As we know the prevailing silence around sexual assault, it is my hope and request that you take a moment to contribute to this outreach and forward this to any and all allies and survivors of sexual violence. If you know of any coalitions, agencies, shelters, or organizations, feel more than free to offer this to them.

This is a long time vision of mine to build something for survivors and, I hope, this is just the beginning of community healing and radical memoir.

 Mike Tyson's "confession", The Pocketbook Monologues, un-beweavable Oprah, Pulitzer winners, and Farai Chideya's "Kiss.."...