Shout

Anderson states that this book is meant to document “finding my courage to speak up twenty-five years after I was raped, writing Speak, and talking with countless survivors of sexual violence” (1), which has influenced her life and work. Anderson begins the book’s Prelude, entitled “mic test,” with a poem to describe her project when writing this memoir. She writes about the book’s mission using imagery to describe her life as a means for the reader to understand “what I feel like / on the inside” (3).

Part 1 opens with Anderson’s father’s traumatic experiences serving in the US army during World War II. He was 18 years old at the time of his service. He witnessed the brutal deaths of his fellow soldiers and served as part of a unit that helped to liberate Dachau concentration camp. As an old man, her father tells her he witnessed horrific sights at Dachau, but he also witnessed a woman giving birth to a baby in a ditch, which inspired him.

Anderson’s father marries his mother, but he suffers from post-war depression and alcoholism. Her mother later admits he was once violent towards her, claiming that “‘I wouldn’t shut up,’ / she said, ‘He had to’” (12). This experience scars her, and she rarely speaks up to her husband. This is the beginning of Anderson’s mother’s pattern of silence in the face of violent and violating behavior.

As a child, Anderson curses in front of women from her father’s church, where he serves as a pastor. Her mother scrubs her mouth with soap even though she herself has sworn in front of her daughter. Anderson also recalls her mother’s insistence on swimming lessons at a local pond. Anderson, afraid of the deeper water, pretends to swim to avoid going into deeper, more treacherous water.

Anderson’s family moves, and her mother signs her up for the local swim team. She grows to love swimming, thinking of herself as a “mermaid made real […] I could breathe without air” (23). While on the swim team, Anderson begins to note the differences between how boys and girls interact in the pool: The boys are far more physical and destructive, while the girls “stay in the shallows / after their baptism as bait” (24). It becomes clear that the boys’ inappropriate behavior will be ignored by the lifeguards on duty.

Around this time, Anderson discovers the wonders of her local library. She cherishes the opportunities to access books, explaining, “I unlocked the treasure chest / and swallowed the key” (27). However, her family begins to comment on her weight when she is eight years old. They tell her that she should prepare herself to be made fun of if she continues to be fat.

She finds freedom in riding her bike, which she describes as “horses / disguised as bicycles”(30), and accepts the cuts, bruises, and wounds of childhood as rudimentary. When her friend’s younger sister gets hurt while playing with them, however, Anderson runs and hides, ashamed that the girl’s wound was her fault. The shame of this moment remains with her long after the girl’s cast is removed.

Anderson’s sister reads her diary and tells Anderson’s secrets to their parents. Angry and horrified, Anderson gets back at her sister by telling her scary stories in the dark before bed. This event is one of the first moments when she sees herself as a storyteller.

Anderson includes the poem “amplified,” written in a prose-poetry, numbered format and detailing her father’s devotion to Jesus while serving as a preacher on a college campus. Religion is so important to him that Anderson believes Jesus to be a distant relative. At school, young Anderson feels out of place. She witnesses her father succumb to his alcoholism as he is haunted by his experiences as a young man and by the dramatic protests against the Vietnam War on campus. The tension of America at war begins to seep into everything, as Anderson notes: “I thought I was the only kid with a house on fire, but I wasn’t” (38).

The next poem, “first blood,” uses formatting to juxtapose the oppression women faced in 1972, when spousal rape, sexual harassment, and workplace inequality were all legal, alongside Anderson’s first menstrual cycle the same year. No one explained to her that menstruating involved bleeding, or how to use tampons, and instead focused on telling her how dangerous boys could be.