Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You [Paperback]

Sue William Silverman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 1999

Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You destroys our complacency about who among us can commit unspeakable atrocities, who is subjected to them, and who can stop them. From age four to eighteen, Sue William Silverman was repeatedly sexually abused by her father, an influential government official and successful banker. Through her eyes, we see an outwardly normal family built on a foundation of horrifying secrets that long went unreported, undetected, and unconfessed.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Belying the sensationalistic title, Silverman's memoir is a subtle, powerful evocation of the tragedy of incest. From the age of 4 until she left for college at 18, Silverman was sexually abused by her father, a powerful government official. Although the family lived in posh surroundings, hers was literally a house of horrors: her mother often retreated to her bedroom with a series of vaguely defined illnesses while her older sister jumped at any opportunity to get out of the house, leaving Silverman alone to deal with her father's uncontrollable rage and often violent sexual abuse. Although she exhibited all the classic symptoms, including promiscuity and an eating disorder, no one helped her, and she struggled to find emotional equilibrium well into adulthood. Finally, with the aid of a good psychiatrist and a loving husband, she was able to confront her childhood trauma. This harrowing memoir gives voice to the inarticulate terror Silverman suffered as a child, when she could never find the right words to describe her situation. She has found them now. Joanne Wilkinson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A woman's excrutiatingly painful and explicit account of 14 years of incestuous abuse. With great courage and startling compassion, Silverman tells the story of how her father, once chief counsel to the secretary of the Interior and later an international banker, made her his sexual companion. Beginning when she was four years old, the incest escalated from fondling in the bathtub to oral and finally full-fledged and frequent vaginal intercourse. With her mother's unspoken acquiesence (``I was a present to her husband'') Silverman became a willing instrument in calming her beloved father's frequent rages. Extraordinarily frank (``It feels good, yes. I discover its pleasure before its shame''), Silverman is able to recreate the emotional trail that leads from terror to pleasure, from confusion and fear to disassociation. Two new personalities emerge to take the brunt of her father's sexual forays. One is Dina, passive and wanting only to please; the other is Celeste, angry, challenging, and hungry. But even with these guardian personae, the little girl Sue remains acutely vulnerable. As a second-grader, she felt so unprotected that she dropped out of school for a year; a few years later, during an especially traumatic period, she spent most of three months sleeping. As Silverman enters adolescence, she struggles to break away, but not until she leaves for college does her father abruptly stop his sexual marauding. Silverman spends the next 30 years trying to understand and control both her sexual aggressiveness and her self-starvation--an attempt, in essence, to make her abused body disappear. With therapy and a loving husband, she succeeds and, almost unbelievably, comes to terms with her parents as well. Harrowing in its depiction of savage violation and profoundly moving in its portrait of a child's fear, confusion, and desperate search for a safe place. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press; New edition edition (September 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820321753
• ISBN-13: 978-0820321752
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sue William Silverman's memoir, "Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction," is also a Lifetime Television original movie. Her first memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You," won the AWP award series in creative nonfiction. Her poetry collection is "Hieroglyphics in Neon." Sue's most recent book is "Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir," which won Honorable Mention in "ForeWord Review's" book of the year award. The "Tallahassee Democrat" says of Sue's writing: "Beautiful, rocketing prose."

Sue has appeared on such television programs as The View, Anderson Cooper-360, and CNN-Headline News. She teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her partner is the poet Marc Sheehan, and they have two cats.

For more information, please visit www.suewilliamsilverman.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From victim to victor-a compelling story ..., August 9, 2000

By 

Bernadette A. Moyer (Lutherville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (Paperback)

Silverman speaks out on the abuse suffered as a child and as a child that came from a highly regarded family. Her story telling is excellent and even the abuse is told from the view of pain rather than pity. Not only will you hear the true story of sexual abuse but the fight for a peaceful life and inner search that moved Silverman from a victim to victor.

Having volunteered and worked with many young abuse victims from child to adolescent, her story was sad but also inspiring. Many victims grow to blame the world for the pain ensued upon them. They allow the abuse to wreck havoc with all interpersonal relationships. Silverman confronts her abuse, her abuser and moves on to the path of strength and wellness.

She shows courage and fortitude in her search for inner peace. Having read many titles on this subject, I have found this to be the most inspiring and sound. Many others are written from the one-sided victim role and this title finds the balance and answers the questions; What am I going to do about it? What can I do to get better? How can I help myself and help others?

Be warned you will read some acts of abuse that will make you cringe and perhaps put the book down to reflect.

An adult title for anyone who has experienced abuse or is associated with an abuse survivor or works with abuse survivors.

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling story of child abuse, February 29, 2000

By 

"kathrynlively" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (Paperback)

This is one book I sincerely wish did not have to be written or published, not because it happened, but because I wish something like this never had to happen. I had not heard of Sue William Silverman before picking up her memoir, and the second I closed the covers together I wished that she did not have to live the life she was forced to live. To have survived years of torment and terror, of which Williamson has her own definitions, is truly a testament to the author's will to maintain a normal life beyond the circle of abuse.

Written to read like a novel, Because I Remember Terror is a gripping history of abuse and power, and of the subsequent healing and forgiveness. People with weak stomachs should be warned that Silverman does not sugar-coat her childhood--her language, though vibrant and flowing, is quite raw. Those fortunate to have never been sexually abused should read this as an account of a terror that needs to be extinguished. Those who have been abused will look to this book as representation of one woman's survival.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remembering Terror by garrie keyman, April 30, 2005

By 

garrie keyman "Embrace the Power at www.garri... (Tuscacheague) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (Paperback)

Powerful in its lean simplicity, gripping in its honesty, Sue Silverman's voice rivets the reader with its sensual evocation of imagery and ability to draw a reluctant audience into the painful world in which she was raised.

Written in vignettes - snapshots of memory - Silverman's book, published by the University of Georgia Press, courageously shares the stark terror of growing up a victim of incest. Masterfully alive in her words are the confusion, shame, and overwhelming dissolution of self such experiences engender.

Yet for all its unspeakable tragedy, Because I Remember Terror is also a tale of recovery, of a woman's unbreakable inner being and her ability to rise beyond the crushing dust of a shattered childhood.

Like many other readers, I read Silverman's 272-page memoir in a single day, unable to set it aside. Still, one could never claim to like Silverman's book any more than one would claim to have loved, say, Shindler's List. Be moved by it, yes. Be forever altered, indeed. But like? Love? No sane person can wade into the pool of another's suffering and enjoy it. Still, Silverman's words and her tale beckon, an immersion we all need if we, as society, are ever to begin cleansing this festering, hidden wound that surrounds us in silent horror.

Silverman is to be applauded for her advocacy of others in similar straights, to be respected for not submitting, in the final analysis, to the terror to which her sadistic father subjected her, a terror to which her mother turned a blind eye and hardened heart. Parents, teachers, psychologists, doctors - even teenagers -- should read this book. Silverman's is a voice crying out in a veritable wilderness where children are being lost to violence every day. Yes, here. In America. Maybe in the house next door to you. Maybe in your own.

Please. Hear her.