Weekly Geeks : Social issues

Weekly Geeks #4: Social Issues---Child Abuse

from Reading Room by gautami tripathy

This week’s theme: Choose a political or social issue that matters to you. Find several books addressing that issue; they don’t have to be books you’ve read, just books you might like to read. Using images (of the book covers or whatever you feel illustrates your topic) present these books in your blog.


There are so many issues close to my heart. However, I feel very strongly about child abuse. I work for such children too, girls. But boys too are equally vulnerable. One book that comes immediately to mind is , The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini. This deals with sexual abuse of Hassan, son of Amir's father's servant. Amir carries this guilt forever that he watched it happening and couldn't do anything.




Another book touching this, is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. In this novel within a novel, it is slowly revealed that Laura Chase was molested by her tutor as a child.






The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison deals with child sex (incest). Pecola is a black girl who is raped by her father, and whose child from the rape dies in infancy.



In Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult, Nina Frost is a DA who tries to prosecute child abusers. When her five-year-old son is sexually abused, the world around her crashes down.



To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, needs no introduction. Here a black is accused of raping a white girl.


There are many other books dealing with this issue. A few of those I can recall now are:

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memory of my Melancholic Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Autobiographical)

I have not read all of those. But I will.