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Fearless honesty. Deep despair. Resilient discovery. Profound forgiveness. Revolutionary hope and liberation.
Submerged is the story of one woman's journey from a nightmare of childhood sexual abuse through a world of drug gangs and murder to prison and, ultimately, personal redemption through faith and a dedication to helping others.
This is Sheena King's story, a raw, harrowing memoir anchored in revolutionary and transformative love. It is, at the same time, a story shared by tens of thousands of women, especially women of color who are incarcerated as the result of events that began with abuse by someone who should have been there to protect and nurture them.
During her years in prison, Sheena found the strength to free herself through the process of helping countless other victims of childhood abuse. Now she offers her memoir with the express hope that it will help many more.
As Rikeyah Lindsay of the Abolitionist Law Center writes in her foreword, “We must take our collective healing seriously, interrogating the root causes and demanding accountability not only for ourselves but also for the systems that create the conditions in which so much harm can occur.” With Lindsay's foreword and an introduction by Victoria Law, Submerged offers essential insights for all who want to understand and participate in the growing movement for alternatives to incarceration.
In her own introduction Sheena King writes: “I’ve told my story. Now tell yours. It will free you.”
Praise
“Submerged is a tidal wave that will leave you feeling as if you are drowning only to provide a lifeline to stable ground. Anchored in revolutionary and transformative love, Submerged also allows us to swim to shore with our souls intact.”
—Joy James, author of In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner
"Powerful. A moving and heartbreaking tale of innocence lost, two lives destroyed, and one woman's incredible journey to redemption behind prison walls."
—Tammy Mal, author of Convenient Suspect and Little Girl Lost
"Submerged proves that while you can sink to the depths, you can also rise back up through the power of testimony. Searing, it hurts, yet it is so worth it to read. Sheena King’s book is going to help a lot of people."
—Jennifer Black, coeditor of Beneath the Mountain: An Anti-prison Reader
“Submerged will challenge you, haunt you, and—by the very fact that Sheena King managed against formidable odds to create this powerful memoir—bolster your faith that a person can not only survive the unsurvivable but triumph."
—Rev. Steve Kanji Ruhl, M.Div., author of the award-winning memoir Appalachian Zen
“Sheena King's Submerged is unflinchingly honest, hard to read and impossible to look away from.”
—Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism.
"Sheena's way of creatively sharing her story with us is inspiring. The truth, challenge and triumph all entwined, keeps the reader engrossed in the storyline and makes us seek more. She was meant to be a writer. Cheers to what's next!"
—Terri Harper, inmate serving a life sentence at SCI Muncy in Pennsylvania and editor of The Movement magazine
“Submerged offers us the best hope for building a movement of understanding and resistance. Not uncomplicated or uncontroversial, the book is as painful as it is inspiring and as troubling as it is hopeful. But the message is clear: survivors’ stories told through personal accounts and poems will not only teach us but lead us to work for justice and freedom like we have never worked before.”
—Beth Ritchie, author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation; and coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now.
“By narrating her endurance and survival of childhood sexual abuse in Submerged, Sheena King beams twin lights: the harsh light of truth and the warming light that comes when trauma is no longer hidden in darkness but is seen, shared, and in the process of being healed.”
—K.A. Hays, author of Windthrow and associate professor of creative writing, Bucknell University
“Sheena King has given us an unforgettable account of despair and discovery, forgiveness and hope.”
—Joyce Hinnefeld, emerita professor of English at Moravian University, program facilitator at Shining Light, author of The Dime Museum
“Submerged weaves poetry and prose into a provocative narrative, witnessing how courage and emotional fortitude can dispel the darkest shadows and restore the light.”
—Jennifer Hwozdek, teaching artist, Life Out Loud, a trauma-informed storytelling program serving incarcerated women and codirector, Ridgelines Language Arts
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