Fighting Words, Healing Conversations

Author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center bring light to the darkness of child abuse

By Anna Faller | Nov. 23, 2024

Content Warning: Both the featured book and this article contain references to topics like sexual assault, attempted suicide, drug addiction, and child abuse. Please consider this when choosing when and how to read.

Award-winning children’s author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley wants you to talk about the hard stuff. In particular, she wants to amplify awareness surrounding child sexual abuse, because it’s happening in our communities, whether we’d like to acknowledge it or not.

“I think until people understand the prevalence of this problem and the amount of damage that it causes, there isn’t nearly enough of an impetus to stop it because nobody is willing to talk about it,” she says.

So, talking about it—and denouncing it, fighting it, and so much more—is just what she’s done in her Newbery Medal-winning middle-grade novel, Fighting Words (2020).

Join Bradley as she takes the National Writers Series stage on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7pm for a discussion, presented in partnership with Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center, surrounding the scope and prevention of child sexual abuse, as well as the power that comes from owning your own story.

Telling Difficult Stories

With 20 children’s and YA books to her name, Bradley is an expert at reframing complex and sometimes tough topics for even the youngest readers.

Her story starts when she was a Smith College sophomore, and a gap in her schedule landed her in what was supposed to be a blowoff education course. Unbeknownst to Bradley, though, the class’s professor was acclaimed children’s author Patricia MacLachlan, whose 1985 novel, Sarah, Plain and Tall, received a Newbery Medal.

“She was bringing in all kinds of authors, and I met all of these people while doing the class,” Bradley notes. “She really laid out the work I’d need to do to turn a love of books into a career.”

Since then, Bradley’s book repertoire has grown to include such groundbreaking historical novels as the Newbery Honor Medal recipient The War That Saved My Life (2016), its bestselling sequel The War I Finally Won, and Jefferson’s Sons (2011). She’s also the co-author of She Persisted: Rosalind Franklin (2022), an early chapter biography of the scientist, written alongside Chelsea Clinton. Many of her books were inspired by major cultural topics that define a place or a time.

Fighting Words, however, was markedly different.

Per Bradley, the storyline actually arose in the midst of assembling another book (her newest novel, The Night War, which was published in April), and instead of curiosity or intrigue, was sparked by another emotion: rage.

As she tells it, Bradley caught wind of an event on the news one day that made her angry, though she declines to specify what it was. So she started typing.

“I didn’t think, really—I just typed [for two days]. By the end, I had 39 pages of a rough narrative arc, and I was still furious. So, I sent it to my editor, and said, ‘I promise you I will do the work to turn this into a book.’”

Naming Right and Wrong

That manuscript became Fighting Words, which is one of the first books of its age group (middle grade, intended for readers ages eight to 12) to really tackle the topic of sexual assault.

The book follows a sister duo: teenage Suki and 10-year-old Delicious Neveah, or Della, for short. When readers first meet Della and Suki, they’ve just been placed in foster care after their unofficial stepfather, Clifton—the predatory ex of their now-incarcerated mother—is caught in the act of abusing Della. We don’t learn until later that Clifton has been subjecting Suki to that same horror for years.

What follows is the emotional fallout in the wake of the trauma the girls have experienced, which culminates in Suki attempting suicide, and eventually, their separate paths towards healing.

Parallel to the girls’ two storylines, we also get a peek into Della’s school life, wherein she learns to make connections with her peers and stand up for herself, but also grapples with a classmate named Trevor who thinks it’s funny to snap girls’ bra straps—and if they don’t wear one, pinch their backs (an all-too-relatable memory for many women).

The goal here, notes Bradley, was to provide an example of the many shapes assault can take and demonstrate to young readers, especially that there’s never an acceptable scenario for it. In our conversation, she even notes a few instances where child abuse was reported because of the book.

“We wanted to address this ‘boys will be boys’ [attitude], which is a huge step towards ending assault of all kinds,” she adds.

Taking a New Approach

Thus, it made perfect sense to team up with Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center (TBCAC) for this event.

TBCAC is a regional response center and nonprofit for young people who have experienced violence, criminal neglect, and especially child sexual abuse. The organization serves kids throughout six northwest Michigan counties, as well as the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Its services include trauma-informed intervention and advocacy, counseling, and research-based prevention, with the goal providing protection and healing.

Per TBCAC data, one in four girls and one in about six to 13 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. For perspective, in a classroom of 25 kids, that’s about five who have been or are being exploited.

“[Child sexual abuse] is a very pervasive problem, and it spans all socioeconomic groups,” says TBCAC Senior Advisor of Primary Prevention Reggie Noto. “[Its] consequences can affect the mental and physical health of victims throughout their lifetime.”

Bradley herself is a sexual assault survivor, an experience which she says informed the novel’s key themes.

The book was written with a younger audience in mind, and the TBCAC team highlights that its narrative purposefully omits direct language (think: biological terms for body parts or graphic descriptions) and familiarizes readers with the signs and scope of sexual assault, while avoiding what Noto calls “the social flinch,” or the instinct to cut and run when confronted with an uncomfortable topic.

“This is a very hard issue to talk about, and when you overwhelm people with statistics, they really don’t want to hear about it,” she says. “We’re trying to find another approach to helping communities know more about child sexual abuse and be willing to act, if they must.”

Building Confidence and Resilience

As TBCAC Chief Executive Officer Lander Bachert underscores, there’s also a broader component to fostering resilient and thriving communities by reducing instances of sexual trauma, which in the U.S., equates to more than one billion dollars per year spent on fallout.

“When we talk about healthy communities and healthy economies, folks whose trauma is mitigated are allowed to become happy and healthy adults,” she explains. “[To achieve that], we have to work within the systems we’re given to take care of each other.”

Per Bachert, this process starts with ensuring the basics, like teaching children how to recognize what kinds of interactions are healthy, safe, and respectful. She and Bradley are both quick to stress that abuse is never the child’s fault, and their protection should fall to adults.

Community care and consciousness are also key to trauma prevention, especially when we consider that a whopping 93 percent of reported child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator.

“Kids deserve confidence, they deserve resilience, and they need to understand that adults know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Bachert adds.

Other community mechanisms geared towards ending child sexual abuse include the recent social movement around body autonomy, as well as community education, like the TBCAC’s Talk-Protect-Report (TPR) training course led by Prevention Coordinator Jenna Baker.

But the very first step is saying something, which is exactly why resources like Fighting Words matter.

“I think it’s important to know that [sexual abuse] is something you can heal from,” concludes Bradley. “Until we bring it out in the open, we can’t truly address it.”

About the Event

An Evening with Kimberly Brubaker Bradley takes place on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7pm at the City Opera House (106 E. Front Street) in Traverse City and via livestream. Tickets range from $15-$27 plus ticket fees, and her featured novel, Fighting Words, is available via Horizon Books. Both in-person and livestream tickets can be purchased through the links on the National Writers Series website. The guest host for the event is Beth Milligan, local journalist and head writer for The Ticker. For more information, visit nationalwritersseries.org.

The Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center is located at 2000 Chartwell Dr. #3 in Traverse City. (231) 929-4250. For more information, or to access courses and services, visit traversebaycac.org.