#Popsugar Reading Challenge Book 10: #MeToo

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book of at least 24 poems.
#MeToo: Rallying Against Sexual Assault and Harassment, A Women's Poetry Anthology, edited by Deborah Alma.

This is a stellar collection of mostly British poets, most of whom I wasn't familiar with . The poems are intense, relatable, well-crafted, moving, and infuriating.

The book is loosely divided into sections, beginning with childhood experiences of flashers & creeps, and continuing with everyday harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, being disbelieved and silenced, etc. 

A recurring theme is the way women learn to downplay and excuse their own experiences of abuse and harassment. (Roxane Gay's prose anthology Not That Bad also deals with this theme.) For instance, Amy Rainbow's poem "Enough" lists some of her experiences from age 14 on, with gropers, catcallers, peeping Toms, harassers following her on the street, and more, but nothing that was technically assault or rape. At age 46, she concludes:


fortunate 
all my stories small
but always wary
and always wondering whether they are enough
for me to say
me too

This theme is echoed in the final section, which is about rising up and speaking out. Sarah Doyle's poem "#MeToo" similarly describes the gauntlet from street harassment to date rape, and concludes:

Enough tears. Enough silence. It was all of us but we
never knew. Sisters, take my hands, we can say it together:
     me too
                            me too
                                                    me too.

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