Working with available light

I loved this book for its honesty and willingness to explore its ideas without fear of sounding ridiculous. For example: How does a husband adapt to his wife's rape and trauma in terms of his own desires for her and the threat he himself may pose to her for violence, sexual or otherwise? How can a liberal minded white woman react to her assault by an unidentified black man without demonizing any black man passing by on the street?

It explains so well why so many victims of rape wish to remain anonymous and decline to press charges (if the option is even available to them), in part because they wish to maintain their identity as non-victims to their friends, families, and the wider world. For so many, the wounds remain internal and we are unknowingly surrounded by sufferers of sexual violence and living in places where it has happened.

I can understand why some of the book's willingness to risk being off-putting might succeed with some readers at being so. From my perspective as someone who has not personally been assaulted, it was helpful to have a reporter from the same perspective exploring how one attack rippled out through the lives of his wife, children, friends, and community. There are many levels of privilege (a white family, living in Hyde Park, summers in Vermont) and thankfully they are discussed with openness and self-consciousness, with understanding of how sexual violence, violence, poverty exist elsewhere (public housing in Chicago; Bosnia).

Kalven and Evans did not ultimately flee the city. The reason I heard of him and his book (which is from 1999, 11 years after the assault) was because he was part of the successful agitation to have the dash-cam video of the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald released to the public in 2015.