I just finished reading Amanda Knox’s memoir Waiting To Be Heard, and I am appalled by the enormity of the indignities and injustices she had to endure over four years. Bits and pieces in the newspapers and sound bites on TV gave us very little of what was really happening to her before and during the trial. Reading it filled me with fury and made me feel helpless and disheartened. Not many people could have restrained themselves, as she did, from blowing up and screaming at the police and prosecutors for their deliberate cruelty and obtuse ineptitude. She were right in staying true to her nature and keeping it all tucked inside. And that’s why her memoir is so important now. Not only was writing it cathartic for her, but it was also therapeutic, because as painful as I’m sure it was to revive it all again, every word on those 457 pages set her free. The truth set her free, and I hope she is finding peace now in the safety of her family and friends and a promising future life. As a Comp teacher, I must say that apart from the content, her account of events is extraordinarily well-organized and coherent, particularly since all of it is personal. It is very hard to be dispassionate when you are writing a memoir that is as emotionally charged as hers. It reads like some kind of nightmarish detective story until the true evidence is revealed in the end and she is exonerated. She is a gifted writer, and she makes her case convincingly. I shook her dad’s hand once at a JFK Crab Feed and told him we were praying in my classes for his daughter’s release, but at the time prayer seemed like a weak response to the huge waves of injustice sweeping over her in Perugia. If they helped in some small way to give her the strength she needed to get through it, I am glad. It was the least we could do.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:42:10 +0000
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