I Choose Elena: On Trauma, Memory and Survival(2 Mood Indigo)

Aged 15 and on track to be an Olympic gymnast, Lucia Osborne-Crowley was violently raped on a night out, sparking a series of events that left her devastatingly ill for more than ten years of her life. Her path to healing began a decade later, when she told someone about her rape for the very first time. Eventually finding solace in writers like Elena Ferrante, this is a work about rediscovering vulnerability and resilience in the face of formerly unbearable trauma. The author explores what has been proved, but is not yet widely known, about trauma, bringing to our attention, its cyclical, intergenerational nature: how trauma intersects with deeply-held beliefs about the credibility of women: and how trauma is played out again and again i the fabric of our cultures, governments, judicial systems, and relationships.  'If you buy one book today let it be this one...It moved me to tears and to anger.' - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under 'This book is burrowed deep under my skin.' - Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater

About the Author :
Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a writer and journalist. Her news reporting and literary work has appeared in Granta, the Sunday Times, HuffPost UK, the Guardian, ABC News, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and others. Lucia works as a staff reporter for Law360. I Choose Elena is her first book. Her second book, My Body Keeps Your Secrets: Dispatches on Shame and Reclamation, was published on 2 September 2021.

Review :
Mention of the book in ‘Women essayists shift the rules and boundaries in the literary world’ https://www.ft.com/content/e8126aec-b1e3-11e9-bec9-fdcab53d6959 Review: I Choose Elena by Lucia Osborne-Crowley ‘a thoroughly researched and deeply affecting essay . . . In the age of #MeToo and Harvey Weinstein allegations this essay is an essential contribution to the field of literature on assault and trauma’ https://thefountain.scot/reviews/2019/09/review-i-choose-elena-by-lucia-osborne-crowley/ ‘How Bibliotherapy Helped Me To Deal With Trauma’ ‘There is nothing more comforting than having someone bear witness to your suffering. It is the only thing, I believe, that allows us to feel pain instead of trying to escape from it. It is knowing the writer has felt how you feel, and has done the kindness of putting it into words.’ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-bibliotherapy-helped-me-to-deal-with-trauma-ptwdfhhln ‘Write what you want to forget’ ‘Honesty is why I started. So I have accepted the fact that this story is imperfect, that people might try to destroy me in the details. It will not be an easy ending, or a pleasant one, but it will be, for the first time, one that I have chosen.’ http://bookanista.com/write-forget/ ‘Love After Abuse’ ‘What I have been able to do is accept the truth of my intimate self. I know now that she is bloodied and broken, and perhaps damaged beyond repair. But I am trying, and will keep trying, because whoever was buried under the weight of abuse is worth fighting for.’ https://granta.com/love-after-abuse/ ‘The Paradox of Dependence’ ‘To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. I will not be the cool girl, the dream girl, the crane-wife, because she is a lie. She is a straw-woman in a field full of hungry ravens, and I am done with her. She’s not worth it, and neither is he.’ https://meanjin.com.au/blog/the-paradox-of-dependence/ ‘Two years on, the literature of #MeToo is coming of age’ ‘A masterful examination of trauma and finding solace in literature.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/literature-metoo-writing-power-gender-relations-men ‘A Cure of One’s Own’ ‘In the past couple of years more than a dozen books have been published by women about women’s pain conditions … including Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s I Choose Elena’ https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/11/womens-chronic-illness-pain-conditions-endometriosis-vaginismus-vulvodynia-literature ‘Frozen’ ‘For anyone who has ever doubted a rape story, demanding, “Why did you wait so long before you told anyone?”, Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s short memoir is essential reading.’ https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/i-choose-elena-by-lucia-osborne-crowley-book-review-terri-apter/ ‘Is it messed up?’ ‘On the surface, I Choose Elena is an exploration of trauma – of the debilitating and disabling physical and mental impact of the author’s rape as a teenager. The way trauma can turn your body against you; the way you think you can outrun or ignore it, but you never can.’   Summer Issue ‘It is a ground breaking approach to discussing issues that we know are so often hidden’ https://twitter.com/SLTNorfolk/status/1339189801195630592 CRÍTICA A DOS VOCES DE ‘ELIJO A ELENA’, DE LUCÍA OSBORNE- CROWLEY (Joint review of I Choose Elena) Tensi: ‘Todo esto lo cuenta en este libro, que huye de eufemismos y cuenta la realidad sin matices, quizás por eso se debe leer sosegadamente, pues el dolor se puede palpar muy adentro.’ (All of this is recounted in this book, which shuns euphemisms and tells reality without nuances, perhaps this is why one should read it gently, because one can feel the pain deep inside.’ Miriam: ‘Yo elijo a Lucía. Ella me ha liberado. Me ha ayudado a encontrarme.’ (I choose Lucia. She has freed me. She has helped me find myself.’ https://lecturafilia.com/2020/12/21/critica-a-dos-voces-de-elijo-a-elena-de-lucia-osborne-crowley/ Shameful: Women who write about their pain suffer a double shaming: once for getting injured, twice for their act of self-exposure ‘In her memoir I Choose Elena (2019), Lucia Osborne-Crowley gives a moving account of a violent sexual assault she underwent as a teenager, and its ensuing aftermath in the form of chronic physical illness.’ https://aeon.co/essays/shame-heaps-upon-shame-in-womens-memoirs-of-suffering