Книга - I Will Find You: In Search of the Man Who Raped Me

I Will Find You: In Search of the Man Who Raped Me
Joanna Connors


‘More chilling than a horror film and more thought-provoking than an HBO doc … I Will Find You is at once hard to read and even harder to put down’ CosmopolitanA hard-hitting memoir about a woman’s search to understand the man who raped herJoanna Connors was thirty years old when she was raped at knifepoint by a stranger.After this horrifying trauma, she became afraid of everything – flying, driving, travelling in a car while someone else drove. She had children, but hovered over them constantly, terrified about what might happen to them as well. Then, when her daughter was sixteen, Joanna began to confront the fear that had ruled her life ever since that day, and decided she needed, finally, to understand.In an act of breathtaking humanity and pioneering journalistic courage, she went in search of the story of her own rapist, determined to find out who he was, where he came from, what his life was like – and what leads a person to do something as destructive as what he did to her.The result of her investigation is I Will Find You, a shocking, moving memoir and a brave, timely consideration of poverty, race, class, education – and how life shapes who we become.









I Will Find You

JOANNA CONNORS










Copyright (#ulink_566dd203-6353-57b2-9a87-6d8d82785f1b)


4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk (http://www.4thestate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

First published in the United States in 2016 by

Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

Copyright © 2016 by Joanna Connors

Cover photo © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images

Joanna Connors asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Epigraph quote by James Baldwin from “As Much Truth As One Can Bear,” The New York Times (January 14, 1962). Quote on p. 76 from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Rolfe Humphries (Indiana University Press, 1955), 146–48. Quote on p. 115 by James Baldwin from “Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit,” Freedomways 19:4 (1979) 269–72.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Cover design by Jonathan Pelham

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007521869

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007521876

Version: 2017-02-20


For Dan and Zoe, beloved And for Chris, who went through it with me




Author’s Note (#ulink_df92860c-3172-56e0-9825-b68956083abd)


It’s no surprise that the term “Rashomon effect” comes from a movie about a rape and murder. Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece (based on the work of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa) tells the story of a violent encounter in the woods through the testimony of four characters. Each one recounts a different version of what happened—including the murdered samurai, who testifies through a medium.

“Rashomon effect” has become shorthand for the way perspective can alter memory. Neuroscientific research suggests that memory is not solid. It is capricious and highly susceptible to outside influence, and changes with each retrieval from the brain.

The addition of trauma makes memory the ultimate unreliable narrator of our own past.

I fact-checked my memories in this book with as much evidence as possible, including stacks of documents, dozens of recorded interviews, and my own journals.

But I also relied on my memories. Others who experienced this trauma may, like the woodcutter or the wife in Rashomon, have other perspectives and other stories to tell. To honor their privacy, I have changed the names of some of the people in this book, and changed characteristics that might identify them.


“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

—James Baldwin


Contents

Cover (#ufcafd073-ffd6-510c-aeb6-63ea6bd29299)

Title Page (#u99cc7bf6-2d54-52d8-852c-980d4272c021)

Copyright (#ub0b08151-5481-5d27-b24d-784fc145b867)

Dedication (#ua18690a6-52e1-5093-9d50-1fc719842ad4)

Author’s Note (#uffcf9e69-ea4f-55f4-9110-76ec2427a9ef)

Epigraph (#uc05b86c8-a521-5214-b110-3252a767c241)

Chapter One (#u0b6c832e-193c-5ff3-b992-009e3a9e736e)

Chapter Two (#u31041fda-0d59-5f7c-b4bb-883b27084507)

Chapter Three (#u7013fd31-f4aa-5b0d-82f7-1f4d96b4f821)

Chapter Four (#u5e1e9000-7ff6-561e-a810-214222fb878c)

Chapter Five (#ub6319828-f20e-5fe9-ab93-7a9bcbbdca45)

Chapter Six (#ubb1a5448-712c-57b4-b1f6-b90ef1814ec8)

Chapter Seven (#ub890f748-0e64-512d-9cbc-2824a0b56f0f)

Chapter Eight (#u467e0720-a612-582c-8e6e-17204152f942)

Chapter Nine (#u569121cd-7ab4-580e-8b48-c4d67691f9ce)

Chapter Ten (#u737e147c-6d30-53aa-bb69-a9419be263c9)

Chapter Eleven (#ue5de6d5e-004d-52f5-8782-de9f9cba15a1)

Chapter Twelve (#u5738d444-e301-5092-88cb-dba1a59c24fd)

Chapter Thirteen (#ucaa96d01-6e91-5f9c-807b-e2853159872f)

Chapter Fourteen (#ue092d672-19ac-5144-b55f-aa1b0e9a3f3a)

Chapter Fifteen (#u83baf227-8661-5c84-86f0-5e8dbd05aa9a)

Chapter Sixteen (#u110a4077-c836-5a77-85b7-518a8e4745fc)

Chapter Seventeen (#u046c6040-b17f-5331-918a-4565567ed392)

Chapter Eighteen (#ud21f6e0d-4f6a-5c83-a392-e9fb3b60d3aa)

Chapter Nineteen (#u8951ecbb-3706-595c-889e-781ecc471a92)

Chapter Twenty (#ue1e8ad8a-8f83-5292-9195-c907930a5db8)

Chapter Twenty-One (#u421c45e0-4693-52fc-87d8-a7df4381f636)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#u45ec3c7b-3c6f-5698-a293-368b9c001387)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#u158de461-f752-5305-a625-0a4a18d792bd)

Acknowledgments (#uaaabcb52-bc85-5531-a8d3-cdcca2b47bfb)

About the Author (#uf6dccae5-b8bd-535a-8f50-1d308a7490bc)

About the Publisher (#u7654be9c-d172-5607-a208-fcb4c470fa68)





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