MS. MIANO'S CLASS PAGE



Text 1: Excerpt From “Speak” by Laurie Halse AndersonPhotoCreditIf my life were a TV show, what would it be? If it were an After-School Special, I would speak in front of an auditorium of my peers on How Not to Lose Your Virginity. Or, Why Seniors Should Be Locked Up. Or, My Summer Vacation: A Drunken Party, Lies, and Rape.Was I raped?Oprah: “Let’s explore that. You said no. He covered your mouth with his hand. You were thirteen years old. It doesn’t matter that you were drunk. Honey, you were raped. What a horrible, horrible thing for you to live though. Didn’t you ever think of telling anyone? You can’t keep this inside forever. Can someone get her a tissue?”Sally Jessy: “I want this boy held responsible. He is to blame for this attack. You do know it was an attack, don’t you? It was not your fault. I want you to listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. It was not your fault. This boy was an animal.”Jerry: “Was it love? No. Was it lust? No. Was it tenderness, sweetness, the First Time they talk about in magazines? No, no, no, no, no! Speak up, Matilda, ah, Melinda, I can’t hear you!”My head is killing me, my throat is killing me, my stomach bubbles with toxic waste. I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?I take two Tylenol and eat a bowl of pudding. Then I watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and fall asleep. A trip to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe would be nice. Maybe I could stay with Daniel Striped Tiger in his tree house.Text 2: Excerpt From a 2013 Op-Ed essay, “Waking Up to the Enduring Memory of Rape,” by Emily YellinMemphisThis is what I know. When I was 16, after most everybody had left a big, alcohol-fueled party in a hotel suite, I passed out drunk. Then, a star football player at my Memphis high school picked me up off the floor, carried me to the bed and raped me. His girlfriend and one other male classmate were also in the room at the time. They did not stop him.That was three decades ago. I don’t bring it up much. But it still comes up sometimes, in my head, anyway. Especially when I hear of a highly publicized rape, like the recent one in Steubenville, Ohio.I do my best to block out those news accounts, and the cavalier talk and portrayal of rape in movies, on TV, online and in music. It is not because I have not come to terms with what happened to me, but because I have — slowly and privately. I feel frustrated and marginalized when I see how out of touch and ignorant our culture is about what rape really is and its effects. So it seems easier to try to be unconscious of all that, as I was when the whole thing first happened.But the Steubenville case is so similar to my story that it has been more difficult than usual to ignore the news this time. When the verdict came down, convicting two football players of raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl, I realized once again, from reports on TV and comments online, that most people tend to do what I did for decades: numb ourselves to the effects of rape. We deny its impact, rage if we ever have to confront what it really is, and feel annoyed that it doesn’t just go away. It all seems easier than facing rape down. In the long run though, it isn’t.Until now, I never wanted to write about what had happened to me for all the world to see. But I know that keeping quiet about it is part of why stories like mine continue to be so common. For every documented rape case, I know there are hundreds more like mine that remain off the record. And so we all remain unconscious about the true nature and extent of rape in our society. ................
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