ANC072: Some Animals Eat Their Young by Dmitra Gideon
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I do not have a daughter / therefore I have kept her safe.
The true prevalence of child abuse is unquantifiable due to the shadows in which it occurs; vicious acts are committed every day yet never reported. Young victims carry lifelong psychological trauma, impacting their daily lives and putting them at risk for a number of further issues—developmental delays, limited opportunities, and additional victimization, among others. These problems compound the social norms already engendering violence against children, contributing to a world in which even more youth are raised in perilous environments.
In Some Animals Eat Their Young, Dmitra Gideon merges public and private histories to address the impossible-to-voice cruelties of child abuse. They blend documented crimes with personal tragedies, incorporating the familial violence of Greek mythology and the formality of legal policies and statistics, ultimately bearing witness to brutality, conveying communal culpability, and dispelling the myth of evil. In poems, essays, and hybrid pieces, Giedon searches for patterns, deciding, "it seems a web; comes from everywhere, converges, spreads. Not cycle but saturation."
For every copy sold, Another New Calligraphy will donate $1 to Hutton House, an emergency shelter and drop-in center for teenagers who run away, are in crisis, or are experiencing homelessness.
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