Warning: The following details may disturb some readers.
Social media saw a flood of messages for Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of late Canadian author Alice Munro, after an eye-opening personal essay about her sexual abuse by her stepfather published this weekend.
In the essay, published in The Toronto Star on Sunday, Skinner detailed how the Nobel laureate remained in her marriage to husband Gerald Fremlin, even after learning of years of his abuse to Skinner, starting when she was nine years old. Skinner describes writing a letter to Munro detailing the abuse, but receiving no sympathy from her mother, who remained with Fremlin until his death, in 2013.
“I … wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” Skinner wrote. “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”
Munro’s Books, founded by the prizewinning short story writer, expressed unequivocal support for Skinner, describing the revelations as "heartbreaking."
“Along with so many readers and writers, we will need time to absorb this news and the impact it may have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and ties to the store we have previously celebrated,” the statement said. “While the bookstore is inextricably linked with Jim and Alice Munro, we have independently owned since 2014. As such, we are not able to speak on behalf of the Munro family.”
The Victoria bookstore also shared a statement from Skinner’s siblings, Jenny and Sheila, and step-brother, Andrew.
“By acknowledging and honouring Andrea’s truth, and being very clear about their wish to end the legacy of silence, the current store owners have become part of our family’s healing, and are modelling a truly positive response to disclosures like Andrea’s,” the family statement reads.
As Skinner’s story came to light, several writers took to social media to discuss the essay and its impact on the literary world.
Highlighting the segment where Munro told Skinner she had been “told too late” of the abuse “and that “our misogynistic culture was to blame,” writer Beverly Gooden – who created the #WhyIStayed movement to portray the pitfalls of domestic violence – said it caused her to “gasp.”
“It’s not the patriarchy, it’s the you. Good grief,” Gooden wrote in a post on X.
Novelist Lydia Kiesling wrote on how the gravity of Skinner’s revelations impact Munro’s legacy.
“To raise kids & exist you kind of have to pretend the world is not a place where a woman renowned for her depictions of human life could feel sexually competitive with her own child who was assaulted by her husband at age 9 & choose him over her, but it is,” Kiesling wrote on X.
Munro often wrote about the emotional complexities of everyday people.
2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai commented on the “seismic shift” in the collective understanding of the late writer and the difficulties in separating an artist from their work.
“And in a way I can’t explain, it feels like a violation, like we were all in an intimate relationship with work that had a horrid underbelly all along. I want to jump on the pile of her work and somehow magically save it all, assign it to some other writer. But we can’t do that,” Makkai wrote on X.
On the other hand, Joyce Carol Oates, the novelist behind “Black Water,” “What I Lived For” and “Blonde,” expressed her years-long admiration of Munro – sharing her thoughts on the essay despite not reading it.
“This article is behind a pay wall so I have not read it; & if I were to read it, I would probably have no comment. A longtime admirer of Alice Munro & would just want to say that, in her fiction, Munro may have confronted something like this dilemma: a ‘good’ woman seemingly oblivious of a common law husband sexually abusing a child,” the X post reads.
In a follow-up post Oates added it’s “sad” and “shameful,” positing Munro appears to have been “a person of her time & place.” The novelist points to Munro’s work as evidence of that.
“(… Munro) dramatized in her stories: provincial, small-town lives where being married, having a husband however despicable is somehow such a high value, a mother would betray her own daughter. entirely of another era, fortunately not our own except in some quarters in the US in which girls/children are routinely abused by men whom others shield & enable,” Oates wrote.
Many took to social media to applaud Skinner’s courage, including American novelist Brandon Taylor.
“I am so amazed by Andrea Skinner. The courage this took. The strength to actually sit down and write it out. The grace and compassion toward others as well as herself. I’m just grateful to her for this,” the post on X reads.
“Either there’s abuse and the person is a total monster who you could never love, or you love the person and so therefore there can’t really have been abuse,” Montreal-based writer Clementine Morrigan, who's writing has explored issues of trauma, childhood sexual abuse and incest, told The Canadian Press.
“So what frustrates me so much in our response when we find out that someone who is an important figure or us … either perpetrated abuse or took part by inaction … we actually repeat this pattern.”
Skinner reported the abuse to police in 2005, resulting in Fremlin pleading guilty to a charge of indecent assault.
With files from The Canadian Press
Resources for sexual assault survivors in Canada
If you or someone you know is struggling with sexual assault or trauma, the following resources are available to support people in crisis:
If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety, you should call 911.
A full list of sexual assault centres in Canada that offer information, advocacy and counselling can be found on the website for the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres.
Helplines, legal services and locations that offer sexual assault kits in Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia can be found here.
National Residential School Crisis Line: +1 866 925 4419
24-hour crisis line: 416 597 8808
Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline: +1 833 900 1010
Trans Lifeline: +1 877 330 6366
Sexual misconduct support for current or former members of the Armed Forces: +1 844 750 1648
Read about your rights as a victim here.
