Voices on love WITH accountability

"With this brave and healing anthology of truth-telling about sexual abuse within Black families, Aishah Shahidah Simmons sets an example for all families. If we could all raise just one generation of children without violence or the threat of violence, who knows what might be possible?"

"[Love WITH Accountability] suggests that we need to think about accountability as a radical form of love, one that gets at the root of our social ills and pushes us to think beyond our current reality—to imagine other ways of relating to each other, to recognize the role we all play in upholding a violent culture and work toward transformative justice. Love WITH Accountabilityenvisions and offers us steps toward creating that more equitable and collectively oriented world."

"Not only have the contributors to this anthology found the bravery to share their survival stories, they have also developed practical and urgent solutions to one of the of most pervasive forms of violence impacting our communities at this time in history. . . . This is a book that should be taught in all classes that address gender, violence, family structure, parenting, race, sexuality, disability and equality and read in organizations that address any of those issues as well. Thank you Aishah [Shahidah] Simmons for once again revealing an urgent paradigm of healing, a new and necessary definition of love."

"With Love With Accountability, Aishah has done it yet again. And she brings an even greater team of radical powerhouses with her this time around. Let us rejoice in this gift of, as Darnell L. Moore notes in the Foreword, 'documented practices that might move survivors in the direction of healing' and 'critical and radical tools that … transform harm doers.' Let us rejoice. Love WITH Accountability is here."

“Aishah Shahidah Simmons is always on time. Her film NO! helped me understand myself as a survivor. Now she offers us Love WITH Accountability, a book that guides readers through a new terrain of healing from childhood sexual abuse.... We are not alone, and we don't have to abandon love in order to live in justice. We have each other, and we are claiming our lives and our families, our transformation, and our healing, together. Thank you for this sharp, tender, reshaping of a text.”

"To say that this anthology is long overdue doesn’t even begin to cover it. For decades, and lifetimes, LGBTQIAA survivors of color have been the backbone of the anti-violence movement and frequently their voices have been pushed into the cracks of the mainstream. A fierce offering of complex, powerful, necessary narratives and critique, Love With Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse dreams a new future into being: one where survivors are centered, and where we can dare to believe that accountability and true justice is possible. This is a gift of a book and the ripples of it’s impact will be with us for decades to come."

“Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse is an interweaving of injustices and radical visions for change into a shawl of trauma and healing that cascades around the shoulders of the survivors, advocates, and witnesses. This important collection of writings drapes over the body enveloping the common threads of each story that pushes us to envision and work to create a world where accountability is the norm. Love WITH Accountability, and compassion frees survivors from guilt, shame and blame, places the onus for change on the harm-doers and the bystanders, and transforms the shawl into a cloak of liberation for us all.”

“Aishah Shahidah Simmons has assembled an insightful group of truth-tellers, survivors and supporters who challenge us to love more deeply and courageously, more protectively and purposefully. Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse is about articulating versions of love and caring with a radically inspired sense of personal and political possibility, of truly anti-racist and anti-sexist child advocacy. This is a book to read closely and to heed with an open and urgent heart.”

"Love with Accountability is an honoring of our ancestors who dared to struggle, a gift to our movements fighting to create thriving communities and a guide for future generations to continue this work. Through Simmons self-work and community of activists, leaders and scholars, they have produced a collection of writings to expose painful truths, while also providing a roadmap for accountability that is based on love, not more false solutions. This book is for anyone who is willing to do the difficult, yet necessary work to end the global epidemic of child sexual abuse."

"As a society, we’ve gravitated toward solutions to end sexual violence and child sexual abuse that are more about shortcut and hiding and less about compassion and truth. Through their own suffering, healing, thriving, and deep wisdom, Aishah Shahidah Simmons and her contributors to the Love With Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse anthology offer us a path forward that is real, compassionate, and true. This work fills me with hope!"

"Aishah Shahidah Simmons has gathered a breathtaking set of perspectives that bring us closer to a world in which every child can be safe and free. Child sexual abuse is among the most urgent, critical, and least understood crises of our time, with devastating consequences across generations.  Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse delivers a quantum leap forward in our insight into the complex trauma wrought by child sexual abuse and the visionary work underway to end it. Reading Love WITH Accountability is like taking a master class in the radical transformation offered by contemporary Black feminist thought and activism. It's a gift for all of us committed to social justice and liberation."