I Choose Elena

On Trauma, Memory and Survival

By: Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Write A Review

eBook | 19 September 2019

At a Glance

ePUB
144 Pages

eBook

RRP $14.66

$13.99

Instant Digital Delivery to your Booktopia Reader App

Startlingly intelligent, disturbing, profound and moving, I Choose Elena shows us that the #MeToo movement has grown roots, and that for survivors of rape and sexual assault, the revolution is just beginning. Osborne-Crowley gives us darkness wrought in light and the hope she offers is as palpable as it is hard-won'

APRIL AYERS LAWSON, AUTHOR OF VIRGIN AND OTHER STORIES

Thank-you Lucia Osborne-Crowley for writing I Choose Elena, for your bold and precise testimony on the devastation of sexual violence, on the body's extraordinary and destructive compulsion to contain its own trauma. Every one of the insights you share is extremely hard-won, and I am so grateful to you for putting them into this incredible book.

ROSIE PRICE, AUTHOR OF WHAT RED IS

Aged fifteen and preparing for her second Gymnastics World Championship, Lucia Osborne-Crowley was violently raped on a night out. The injuries she sustained ended her gymnastics career, and eventually manifested in chronic illness, which medical professionals now believe can be caused by untreated trauma.

Her path to healing began a decade later when she shared her secret for the very first time. Finding solace in writers like Elena Ferrante and Rupi Kaur, she learned how to express her suffering and began to rediscover vulnerability and resilience in the face of a formerly unbearable trauma. Her investigations reveal profound societal failures - of law, justice, education and medicine - and suggest that only empathy can break the cycle of sexual violence.

Eloquent, defiant and honest, I Choose Elena is the story of how a young woman reclaimed her body.