Dear Sister ― Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence

Dear Sister,

It wasn't your fault; it was never your fault. You did nothing wrong. Hold this tight to your heart: it wasn't your fault.

At night when you lay there and your mind fills with images and you wonder if only, if you had . . . if you hadn't . . . . Remember: it wasn't your fault.

Dear Sister highlights the lessons, memories, and vision of over forty artists, activists, mothers, writers, and students who share a common bond: they are survivors of sexual violence. Written in an epistolary format, this multi-generational, multi-ethnic collection of letters and essays is a moving journey into the hearts and minds of the survivors of rape, incest, and other forms of sexual violence, written directly to and for other survivors.

Dear Sister goes far beyond traditional books about healing, which often use "experts" to explain the experience of survivors for the rest of the world. Where other books about rape weave the voices of feminists and activists together and imagine what a world without violence might look like, Dear Sister describes the reality of what the world looks like through the eyes of a survivor. From a professor in the Midwest to a poet in Belgium, an escapee from a child prostitution ring, a survivor advocate in the Congo, and a sex worker in San Francisco, Dear Sister touches on issues of feminism, love, disability, gender, justice, identity, and spirituality.

Lisa Factora-Borchers is a Filipina writer and editor whose work has been published in make/shift, Bitch, Left Turn, and Critical Moment.

Contributors: Aaminah Shakur, Adrienne Maree Brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Allison McCarthy, Amita Y. Swadhin, Amy Ernst, Ana Heaton, Andrea Harris, Angel Propps, anna Saini, Anne Averyt, annu Saini, Ashley Burczak, brownfemipower, Brooke Benoit, Denise Santomauro, Desire Vincent, Dorla Harris, "Harriet J.", Indira Allegra, Isabella Gitana-Woolf, Joan Chen, Judith Stevenson, Juliet November, Kathleen Ahern, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Marianne Kirby, Maroula Blades, Mary Zelinka, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Melissa Dey Hasbrook, Melissa G., Mia Mingus, Michelle Ovalle, Premala Matthen, Rebecca Echeverria, Renee Martin, River Willow Fagan, Sara Durnan, Sarah M. Cash, Shala Bennett, Shanna Katz, Sofia Rose Smith, Sumayyah Talibah, Sydette Harry, Birdy, Viannah E. Duncan, and Zoe Flowers.

Editor: Lisa Factora-Borchers is a Filipina writer and editor of the Dear Sister Anthology. She received her BA in English from Xavier University and a joint masters degree in Counseling Psychology and Pastoral Ministry from Boston College. Lisa worked extensively with survivors of sexual violence in non profits, coalitions, and university settings before applying her work to the literary world. She was an assistant editor at make/shift magazine for three years, and her work can be found in Left Turn, Critical Moment, and Bitch magazines. Her interests focus on liberation, spirituality, (im)migration, US women of color writers, and transnational feminist action. In her spare time, she enjoys developing her photography which was featured in Red Sun Press' political photo exhibit Critical Views: A New Generation. Lisa currently resides in the midwest with her partner and son and is working on a novel.


Foreword: Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning African-American feminist lesbian independent documentary filmmaker, television and radio producer, published writer, international lecturer, and activist based in Philadelphia, PA. An incest and rape survivor, she spent eleven years, seven of which were full time, to produce write, and direct NO! The Rape Documentary. This groundbreaking documentary explores the international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, activism and cultural work of African-Americans.

List of Contributors and Bios

Aaminah Shakur is an Indigenous/Muslim/queer/disabled poet & artist. Her art and writing combine words, images, paint, fiber arts and beadwork to explore love, womanhood, motherhood, spirituality, sexuality, history, borders, privilege and oppression, abuse, freedom and revolution ? and how all of these are interconnected. She currently is focusing on zine-making as a form of independent media creation for marginalized peoples. Goals include networking with both local and worldwide poets and artists, and the creation of a local collective for women of color and queer writers and artists.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs co-founder of UBUNTU a women of color survivor-led coalition to end gendered violence. Instigator of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind multimedia community school. Alexis has a PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women's Studies from Duke University and is proud to have been named one of the 50 people transforming the world by UTNE reader in 2009, a Reproductive Health Reality Check Shero and a nominee for a Black Women Rising Award in 2010 and the recipient of a Too Sexy for 501c3 Trophy in 2011.

Allison McCarthy is a freelance writer. Her work has been featured in print and online publications such as Ms., Bitch, Girlistic, Global Comment, The Feminist Wire, ColorsNW, The Baltimore Review, Hoax, The Write Side-Up, Scribble, JMWW and Dark Sky, as well as in the anthology Robot Hearts: Twisted and True Tales of Seeking Love in the Digital Age (Pinchback Press, 2010). She is currently a graduate student in the Master of Professional Writing program at Chatham University and resides in the greater Washington, DC area.

Amita Swadhin is a bicoastal educator, activist and storyteller whose experiences as a queer woman of color, daughter of immigrants, and survivor of child abuse directly inform her work. As a media activist, she is the People of Color Media Fellow at GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and co-host of the weekly radio show "Flip the Script" on KPFK-LA. As a storyteller, she is the Coordinator and a cast member of Secret Survivors, a theater project she created with the award-winning Ping Chong & Co. featuring survivors of child sexual abuse telling their stories. With support from the Asian Women Giving Circle, she created the short film ?Violent Adult-ISM,” and is develo