Mirror Memoirs: Amita Swadhin on Survivor Storytelling and the Mediation of Rape Culture

Ebony Coletu interviews Amita Swadhin, the founder of Mirror Memoirs, a national storytelling and organizing project featuring the narratives, healing, and leadership of LGBTQI+ people of color who survived child sexual abuse. Recently, they completed sixty audio interviews for a growing archive that brings storytelling to bear on our understanding of how institutional spaces designated for "help" sustain child sexual assault. Working through the theme of this special issue, Swadhin reflects on biographic mediation as a mechanism operating within Mirror Memoirs, explaining how the collection of "inconvenient" stories about survivorship can help transform institutional practices of profiling that disappear the most vulnerable targets of violence.