All the Silent Spaces: A Memoir

(Paperback)

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Description

In September 2007, Christine Ristaino was attacked in a store parking lot while her three- and five-year-old children watched. In All the Silent Spaces, Ristaino shares what it felt like to be an ordinary person confronted with an extraordinary eventa woman trying to deal with acute trauma even as she went on with her everyday life, working at a university and parenting two children with her husband. She not only narrates how this event changed her but also tells how looking at the event through both the reactions of her community and her own sensibility allowed her to finally face two other violent episodes she had previously experienced. As new memories surfaced after the attack, it took everything in Ristainos power to not let catastrophe unravel the precarious threads holding everything together. Moving between the greater issues associated with violence and the personal voyage of overcoming grief, All the Silent Spaces is about letting go of what you think you know in order to rebuild.

Reviews

2020 Readers Favorite Book Awards: Finalist in Non-Fiction Social Issues 2020 Readers Favorite Book Awards Finalist: Non-Fiction: Social Issues 2020 Living Now Book Awards Gold Winner in Inspirational Memoir (Female) 2020 International Book Awards, Finalist in Social Change 2020 IndieReader Discovery Awards Winner in Women's Issues 2019 Best Book Awards Finalist in Social Change 2019 Best Book Awards Finalist in Women's Issues . . . a swirling examination of many of the elements that can factor into violence in America, but its also a portrait of one womans experiences with such violence, and how she managed to find a way to avoid being destroyed by it . . . An insightful, openhearted memoir about brutality in many forms. Kirkus Reviews All the Silent Spaces: A Memoir, by Christine Ristaino, is a deep and lyrical memoir about how a vicious assault affected all aspects of the authors life, and how she found strength to not just endure tragedy but transcend it. This book touches on dynamics one might expectfear, survival, mistrust, recoverybut also on themes one might notlike race, religion, poverty, and politics. IndieReader

Author Bio

Christine Ristaino teaches Italian and is the faculty advisor for a number of programs related to social justice at Emory University. She has coauthored an academic publication titled Lucrezia Marinella and the Querelle des Femmes in Seventeenth-Century Italy and the first edition of a book series, The Italian Virtual Class. Ristaino specializes in Italian language pedagogy, language teaching, cultural acquisition, community engaged learning, and Italian memoir. She writes and publishes articles and op-eds on overcoming violence, having difficult conversations, and equity.