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Fearless honesty. Deep despair. Resilient discovery. Profound forgiveness. Revolutionary hope and liberation.Submerged is the story of one woman's journey from a nightmare of childhood sexual abuse through a world of drug gangs and murder to prison and, ultimately, personal redemption through faith and a dedication to helping others.
This is Sheena King's story, a raw, harrowing memoir anchored in revolutionary and transformative love. It is, at the same time, a story shared by tens of thousands of women, especially women of color who are incarcerated as the result of events that began with abuse by someone who should have been there to protect and nurture them.
During her years in prison, Sheena found the strength to free herself through the process of helping countless other victims of childhood abuse. Now she offers her memoir with the express hope that it will help many more.
As Rikeyah Lindsay of the Abolitionist Law Center writes in her foreword, “This book shows that we must take our collective healing and liberation seriously, interrogating the root causes and demanding accountability not only for ourselves but also for the systems that create the conditions for so much harm to occur.” With Lindsay's foreword and an introduction by Victoria Law,
Submerged offers essential insights for all who want to understand and participate in the growing movement for alternatives to incarceration.
In her own introduction Sheena King writes: “I’ve told my story. Now tell yours. It will free you.”
List of contents
Foreword by Rikeyah Lindsay
Introduction by Victoria Law
Introduction by Sheena Monique King
Chapter 1: September 2010
Chapter 2: July 1981
Chapter 3: September 1981
Chapter 4: December 1982
Chapter 5: May 1983
Chapter 6: August 1983
Chapter 7: July 1984
Chapter 8: March 1985
Chapter 9: January 1987
Chapter 10: October 1988
Chapter 11: February 2014; Remembering Christmas 1990 and July 1991
Chapter 12: March 1992
Chapter 13: January 1994
Chapter 14: April 1998
Chapter 15: February 2004
Chapter 16: March 2012
Postscript
Epilogue: I Chose Love
Afterword
Editor’s Note by Steve Bloom
About the author
Sheena King is presently serving a life sentence at SCI Muncy in Muncy, PA, where she is an advocate for incarcerated women, with degrees in religious studies and Christian counseling. She is the published author of a book of poems and journal entries titled
Unheard Souls and
3Sum. Her poems and essays have been published in journals including
Let's Get Free, Daughters,
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Pittsburgh Peace and Justice Newspaper,
Prison Health News,
Centers for Wisdom, and
Tenacious. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including
International Library of Poetry, and
Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States.
