Not Child's Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest
by Risa Shaw

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Book Reviews of Not Child's Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest

Book Review: "Speaking up and speaking out changes everything."
Summary: 5 Stars

Shaw has collected the voices and art of 35 survivors, and she let's them speak up and out in complex and non-homogenized ways. The editing for this volume is beautiful, as the brief pieces are clear but not in any way standardized in content or form. Here you will meet women who explode with unequivocal rage, stories of girls who told and girls who kept quiet, families who stopped it and (many more) families who didn't, women who have patiently and lovingly cultivated honest adult relationships with their former abusers, women whose demands for truth have cost them their families, and women whose deeply complicated and ambivalent memories make room simultaneously for shame, hurt, fear, and pleasure.

I do not *agree* with every analysis that's offered in this book, but why should I? There is such a glorious chorus of smart voices here that invites a great new level of discussion to commence on this severely under-discussed topic. For example, Margaret Randall writes "Brother-sister incest is not about sex. It is not about pleasure. It is about power, pure and simple" (foreword, p. 2). I think that's too simple - I read many of the pieces in the book as demonstrating how brother-sister sexual abuse is so damaging precisely because it IS about sex and pleasure at the same time that it is about power. Deep, systematic power imbalances distort both girls' and boys' experiences of pleasure and sexual development. I welcome the opportunity to have this discussion, finally! Brava to Risa Shaw and the many contributors. And one additional note: the book is worth it for the Action Girl Figures alone. Simply brilliant!

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