Linda Katherine Cutting, Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).

The author of this book is a concert pianist; she weaves together the story of how her fears threatened her professional career with the story of a hospitalization where she came to face her abuse memories. She was abused by her father, who was a minister. This is a gentle book; her abuse is named but not described. She struggles some with roles that she gets stuck in, but she does not consider herself multiple.

Elly Danica, Don't: A Woman's Word (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1988).

This small book is a series of memories of father-daughter incest and impressions of the healing process--it is not a coherent narrative. It is moving, but I got frustrated with the impressionistic rather than structured approach. However, I was particularly struck by her descriptions of not being able to function as an adult and of very slowly finding healing inside herself.

Kathy Evert and Inie Bijkerk, When You're Ready: A Woman's Healing From Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse by Her Mother (Rockville MD: Launch Press, 1987). Launch Press, P.O. Box 5629, Rockville MD, telephone 800-321-9167.

Bijkerk is Evert's therapist, but I have put the book in this section because Bijkerk, though listed as a coauthor, wrote only a short afterword. This book is a story of the healing process; there are some details of abuse but they are set in the context of healing. Evert does not name what she is dealing with as multiple personality, but she writes movingly about coming to love her inside child. The book is also particularly useful for her description of how she expressed very early abuse with her body in therapy, memories from before she had the words to understand what was happening to her. This is one of the best accounts I have seen of therapy that was truly driven by the inner process of healing, not directed by a therapist who thought s/he had the answers.

Sylvia Fraser, My Father's House: A Memoir of Incest and of Healing (New York: Harper and Row, 1989, hardcover Ticknor and Fields, 1987).

This book is mostly the story of the author's life before she recovers memories of her abuse by her father; her healing process is a small part of the book and not told in much detail. The strongest part of her story deals with her struggles to fit in to the social world of high school in the 1950s. I would recommend this book to anyone who struggled with high school social life. I didn't have a social life in high school, so it didn't speak so much to me.

Heather Harpham, I Went to the Animal Fair: A Journey Through Madness to Meaning (Colorodo Springs: Pinion Press, 1993). Pinon Press, P.O. Box 35007, Colorado Springs CO 80935.

This book is extremely discreet; it refers only very vaguely to her abuse history. It is most helpful for a Christian perspectives on healing. Her faith is central to her journey, but she doesn't expect it to give her easy answers. Her writing style is creative and attempts to give a feel for the process of waking up and trying to put the pieces together. Her father was schizophrenic.

Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss; A Memoir (American School Publishing, 1997).

If you read the review of this book in Newsweek, you probably swore you would never read it, because Newsweek made it sound like a titillating book written by someone who chose to have an affair with her father (starting at age 20). I was lucky; a friend bought it and urged me to read it, and it is nothing like the impression I got from Newsweek.

My friend found it very revealing for how it made clear Harrison's tormented relationship with her (not directly abusive) mother. What hit me was how clearly it showed how she was manipulated by her abuser. If she could still be manipulated that way at age 20, then I could better understand and forgive how I, as a child, could be manipulated into an abusive relationship. It also showed, very clearly, how the abuser systematically destroyed her boundaries. This is a really good book for understanding how abuse happens. It does not involve multiple personalities.

Bell Hooks, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997).

This memoir focuses on Hooks's relationship with a man she lived with for many years and on how she found her voice as a feminist, an African-American, and a writer, not on her abuse history. However, she speaks clearly of the impact of physical and emotional abuse and implies at least one incident of sexual abuse. Because she analyzes what it means to be African-American, I think this book might be particularly useful to anyone who is African-American and trying to come to terms with surviving abuse. She has some brief critiques of the attitudes of therapists towards African-Americans. I found the book very moving as a memoir of being a feminist in the 1970s.