“The public should see this!” said Eleanor. “We are the public, Eleanor” we said. But Eleanor meant that it should be seen by her parents and the professionals who had always made the important decisions for her.

Then we read the book I've Come A Long Way, by Marguerite Godbout. Marguerite is a learner in our program. Her book is always popular because she has had such an interesting life and has faced a lot of challenges, including a physical handicap. Everyone had been writing stories up until this time, but this was when Rose decided that she was going to write a book about her own life. Since Rose did not know how to write many words, Eileen, who could write but not spell, offered to put the words down as Rose dictated. This is what they put on paper in the first two weeks:

First Week:

Nightmareurys

About my father
he bet me with his belt
In My dream. I told him
leave me alone
after the dream I take dizzy
don't touch me
and Paul had to awake me
When I was six years old
My father starting betting
I have burns on my body
I had burns on my back
I was sixteen I left home
I went to see Paul
My clothes were all ript
Paul gave me some of his clothes
Paul clean me up all the blood from the noise...

Second Week:

My Dad take me to the hospital
got my cords tied and burn't
I don't understand what was happening
When got hospital They gave me needle
My older sister take home
I ask my sister where am I when I woke up
My sister said to me
shouldn't get your cord tried and burn't
My sister said to me I can't have children.

This was not an easy story to tell. Rose did not know the words of many things she wanted to say, and she had a hard time remembering things in sequence. The women in the group gave Rose a lot of support. One day, when we were reading over an early draft, Linda smacked the table and said, "He was cruel, Rose. You did the right thing. You got out" Then she left the room and had a cigarette, and came back in and said it again: "He was cruel. You did the right thing, Rose."

Linda had a better sense of what needed to be said than we did. In the beginning, we asked Rose a lot of rather stupid questions about her father: What had his life been like? Did he beat her because he was drunk? And Rose dutifully tried to answer. Then we began to wonder if we had the right to encourage Rose to re-live these experiences. Michele Kuhlmann, who works at a shelter for battered women and their children, gave us some good advice. Nothing, she said, not his old war wounds, not liquor, made it okay for a father to beat up a little girl. Michele said it was wonderful that Rose was determined to write this book, and that many women and children would benefit from her courage. But it wasn't Rose's responsibility to make excuses for her dad.

So we decided that whatever picture Rose painted of her father, through her recollections or her nightmares, would be the true picture. And we decided to illustrate the book through a series of photography workshops, with volunteers acting out the scenes of Rose's life. We were going to show the blood and bruises and cigarette burns. Haley Gaber-Katz, the l2-year-old daughter of a literacy colleague, agreed to play Rose's part. This enabled us to use make-up and costumes to show Rose's life as both a child and a young woman. It also freed Rose up to direct the action. She cast friends at the literacy centre in the other roles, and helped to choose props, such as the vicious army belt similar to the one her father used.

Rose was a good director. We were all afraid of recreating some of the scenes, except Rose. She became more confident and more articulate as the production of the book went on. We published it at the end of the year, under the title My Name is Rose [see p. 57-60 of this issue for an excerpt]. It is very popular among literacy learners, although it has been criticized by literate women. One social worker returned her book order because, she said, her "clients wouldn't be able to identify with Rose, especially the happy ending" (Rose's book ends with her marriage to Paul, which is a happy one). However, most of Rose's mail is enthusiastic "[The book] helps us to become strong like Rose and go after our dreams and to be happy," one learner wrote in our literacy newspaper, Starting Out. "Something we never knew much about - being happy and having dreams." One day Rose received a letter from a literacy policy advisor at the Department of the Secretary of State. He told Rose that he kept her book on his desk, because "It helps me to see it there while I work.”

It will take a long time for Rose to learn to read and write, and perhaps she will never be literate in the way that people who learned in childhood are literate. But the experience of making a book with Rose taught us that breaking the silence about abuse and violence is part of the process of becoming literate for many adults.

At the same time as we were working on Rose's book, the women's group continued to meet. One of the women who could not come very often was Debbie. As a single mother of two, she was not "free" in the way the other women were, and she had never been labeled mentally retarded. However, she wanted to work with us on the issue of childcare for women in literacy programs. After many days of hard work getting her thoughts on paper, Debbie came with us to a conference sponsored by the Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues. On June 20, 1987, she submitted this brief:

'My name is Deborah Sims. I am 31 years old, a single mother raising two young children. When I was a child, I had polio and did not have the opportunity to get an education. When my older daughter was 5, I tried to get grade 1 but the Board of Education refused me because I was an adult and not a child. I did not know what to do but I went to a day school and quickly found out it was too advanced. I did not know enough. I tried another school but it did not suit me.