HEALING HER HURT: Detroit native Robin Stone's new book breaks the silence about sexual assault within black families (cont.)
............................................................................................................................
viewing page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Stone, a native Detroiter, returns to metro Detroit this week to discuss and sign copies of "No Secrets No Lies: How Black Families Can Heal from Sexual Abuse" (Broadway, $23.95).
While back in Michigan from New York, where she currently lives, she'll also receive the Distinguished Alumni Award during Michigan State University commencement exercises. She graduated from MSU in 1986. Since graduating, she's been a writer and editor at some of the nation's top newspapers, including the Detroit Free Press, where she worked as a copy editor for a year starting in 1987.
Researching and writing the book -- which took three years -- helped her recover from the shame and pain she felt, and she hopes reading it will help others, particularly African-Americans, who she contends are particularly reluctant to talk about sexual abuse within families.
"We don't have a monopoly on sexual abuse, but there are some cultural issues that affect the way we respond," Stone says.
Among them:
- "We're reluctant to talk about it," she says. "We
close ranks because we don't want to put our business in the street."
-
"We have a distrust of the agencies that we should turn to for help -- and,
in some cases, rightly so: the police, social service agencies, the whole criminal
justice system."
-
A tradition rooted in African heritage that puts family
first. "We protect the family at the expense of the individual, and
we hold families so dear, and to tell is to betray the family."
- A reluctance to seek psychological counseling for fear of being viewed as mentally ill.