Manorama Six Feet Under<\/em>. <\/p>\nRead this very courageous book. I would want everyone who reads it to take the primary message the book gives: shatter the conspiracy of silence. <\/p>\n
Bitter Chocolate is divided into three notebooks besides the preface and author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s note. It also gives youinformation about helplines and other books to read. Quite informative that ways. Pinki Virani has lots of data with her. Testimonials. Statistics. Anecdotes. News. Data which she very sensitively does not reduce to impersonal numbers. She brings forth the pain and agony in them. At the same time, this runs the risk of confused facts. Other than believing Virani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words, and even if I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind believing them, we have no way to read the sources she quotes. No references. No citation. That does not produce good research. <\/p>\n
The same goes true for the journalese writing style. Some places, there is an overdose of drama. So much so that we get more interested in the details of abuses, rather than the discussion and inferences of them.<\/p>\n
Reading narrations of abuses after abuses becomes disturbing. It is not only because of the disturbing nature of the abuse; it is also because the narrations do not lead to new findings or ideas. She does prove that child sexual abuse, as is commonly thought, is not characteristic of the lower class. That it is not happening to only girls, nor is it done only by men. However there are too many of the cases described. It does give you the extant to which the crime is prevalant, but it also breaks your reading interest. <\/p>\n
However that is no reason to discard this book. One lesson I have learnt and promised myself not to unlearn ever: Listen to your daughter when she tells you she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like someone, Or when she asks you those supossedly dirty questions. Or when she is silent.
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