Shout

"“This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.” Shout is the origin story for Laurie Halse Anderson’s groundbreaking young adult novel Speak, about a teenage girl who can’t find the words to talk about her sexual assault. In this memoir-in-verse, Anderson reveals that she was raped when she was 13 and stayed silent about it for more than two decades. “If I opened my mouth, I was afraid I’d never stop screaming.” Writing was her balm, and these stark, beautiful poems will break your heart, take your breath away and beg to be underlined, highlighted and dog-eared. My favorite of all: “When you figure out what’s eating you alive you can slay it.”"