A graphic memoir delves into a painful past to bear witness to child sexual abuse
Everything Zoomer | Elizabeth Mitchell | April 21, 2022
Review of Our Little Secret in Everything Zoomer!
When Emily Carrington submitted her poem “Stone” to the CBC Poetry Prize in 2017, she was asked to describe it in five words. Since it was based on the sexual abuse she experienced as a child in rural Prince Edward Island, she wrote: “Our little secret no more.”
Her poem went on to be long-listed for the prize but, more importantly, it began an exploration into writing about the secret she had kept for more than 30 years. When she discovered memoirs could be written as graphic novels, something clicked, and she knew she had found the right format.
“I was always drawing as a kid … it was my refuge, along with my animals and nature,” Carrington said recently over Zoom from her home in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. “I didn’t see the finished product in my mind, I just knew, ‘this is how I want to tell my story.’”
It was the visual aspect of graphic books that appealed to Carrington, who is in her mid-fifties. Abuse often happens in isolation and the term “sexual assault” doesn’t convey the victim’s pain and suffering. “In a way, I want my book to serve as a witness to every case of child sexual abuse and not just my own.”
The result is her impressive debut graphic novel Our Little Secret, a frank and openhearted story about one woman’s journey towards healing. The cover features a menacing male figure, but when you open the book, you see a bucolic scene of the young Emily on her chestnut mare, followed by a trigger warning about its dark contents.
With a gentle but firm hand, Carrington illustrates how cases of child sexual abuse follow the same steps in a process known as grooming. She also understands the sensitivity of her material and her illustrations are deliberately not explicit.
“It was important for me to show what predation grooming and its aftermath looks like. Without seeing it, people just don’t get it. They really don’t.” She pauses. “Unless they’ve been through it themselves.”
Read the rest of the review here!
Her poem went on to be long-listed for the prize but, more importantly, it began an exploration into writing about the secret she had kept for more than 30 years. When she discovered memoirs could be written as graphic novels, something clicked, and she knew she had found the right format.
“I was always drawing as a kid … it was my refuge, along with my animals and nature,” Carrington said recently over Zoom from her home in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. “I didn’t see the finished product in my mind, I just knew, ‘this is how I want to tell my story.’”
It was the visual aspect of graphic books that appealed to Carrington, who is in her mid-fifties. Abuse often happens in isolation and the term “sexual assault” doesn’t convey the victim’s pain and suffering. “In a way, I want my book to serve as a witness to every case of child sexual abuse and not just my own.”
The result is her impressive debut graphic novel Our Little Secret, a frank and openhearted story about one woman’s journey towards healing. The cover features a menacing male figure, but when you open the book, you see a bucolic scene of the young Emily on her chestnut mare, followed by a trigger warning about its dark contents.
With a gentle but firm hand, Carrington illustrates how cases of child sexual abuse follow the same steps in a process known as grooming. She also understands the sensitivity of her material and her illustrations are deliberately not explicit.
“It was important for me to show what predation grooming and its aftermath looks like. Without seeing it, people just don’t get it. They really don’t.” She pauses. “Unless they’ve been through it themselves.”
Read the rest of the review here!