Reactions to Alice Munro’s daughter Andrea Skinner’s essay

Warning: The following details may disturb some readers.

Social media has seen a wave of messages for Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of the late Canadian author Alice Munro, after she published a revealing personal essay over the weekend about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather.

In an essay published Sunday in the Toronto Star, Skinner explains how the Nobel laureate remained married to her husband Gerald Fremlin even after learning of the years of abuse he had suffered against her, starting when she was nine. Skinner says she wrote a letter to Munro detailing the abuse but received no sympathy from her mother, who stayed with Fremlin until her death in 2013.

“I wanted this story, my story, to be part of the stories people tell about my mother,” Skinner wrote. “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t confront the reality of what happened to me and the fact that my mother, faced with the truth of what happened, chose to stay with my abuser and protect him.”

Munro’s Books, founded by the award-winning short story writer, expressed its unequivocal support for Skinner, calling the revelations “heartbreaking”.

“Like so many other readers and writers, we will need time to process this news and the impact it may have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and connection to the bookstore we have already celebrated,” the statement said. “While the bookstore is inextricably linked to Jim and Alice Munro, we have been independent owners since 2014. As such, we are unable to speak on behalf of the Munro family.”

Victoria Bookstore also shared a statement from Skinner’s siblings, Jenny and Sheila, and his half-brother, Andrew.

“By acknowledging and honoring Andrea’s truth, and being very clear about their desire to end the legacy of silence, the current owners of the store have become part of our family’s healing and are modeling a truly positive response to revelations like Andrea’s,” the family’s statement read.

When Skinner’s story broke, several writers took to social media to discuss the essay and its impact on the literary world.

Highlighting the segment where Munro told Skinner she was “told too late” about the abuse and that “our misogynistic culture was to blame,” writer Beverly Gooden – who created the #WhyIStayed movement to describe the pitfalls of domestic violence – said it “left her speechless.”

“It’s not the patriarchy, it’s you. Damn it,” Gooden wrote in a message on X.

Novelist Lydia Kiesling has written about the impact of the gravity of Skinner’s revelations on Munro’s legacy.

“To raise children and exist, you have to sort of pretend the world isn’t a place where a woman known for her depictions of human life might feel sexually competitive with her own child who was molested by her husband at age 9 and choose him over her, but it is,” Kiesling wrote on X.

Munro often wrote about the emotional complexities of ordinary people.

Rebecca Makkai, a 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, commented on the “seismic shift” in the collective understanding of the late writer and the difficulties of separating an artist from his work.

“And in some way I can’t explain it, it feels like a violation, like we’re all in an intimate relationship with a work that has always had a horrible side to it. I want to jump into the pile of his work and somehow magically save it all, hand it off to another writer. But we can’t do that,” Makkai wrote on X.

On the other hand, Joyce Carol Oates, the novelist behind “Black Water,” “What I Lived For” and “Blonde,” has expressed her long-standing admiration for Munro, sharing her thoughts on the essay despite not having read it.

“This article is paywalled, so I haven’t read it; and if I did, I probably wouldn’t have a comment. I’m a long-time fan of Alice Munro, and I’d just like to say that in her fiction, Munro may have faced something like this dilemma: a “good” woman seemingly oblivious to the fact that her common-law husband is sexually abusing a child,” X’s post reads.

In another article, Oates added that it was “sad” and “shameful,” saying that Munro seemed to have been “a person of her time and place.” The novelist points to Munro’s work as evidence of this.

“(… Munro) dramatizes in her stories: provincial life, in a small town, where being married, having a husband, however despicable he may be, is somehow such a high value that a mother would betray her own daughter. Quite from another era, fortunately not ours, except in certain neighborhoods in the United States where girls/children are regularly mistreated by men whom others protect and support,” writes Oates.

Many people have praised Skinner’s courage on social media, including American novelist Brandon Taylor.

“I am so in awe of Andrea Skinner. The courage it took to do this. The strength to sit down and write it. The grace and compassion for others as well as herself. I am just grateful for that,” the post on X read.

“Either there is abuse and the person is a monster that you can never love, or you love the person and therefore there can’t really have been abuse,” Montreal writer Clementine Morrigan, whose writing has explored issues of trauma, childhood sexual abuse and incest, told The Canadian Press.

“What frustrates me most about our response when we discover that we or someone important… has committed abuse or participated in it through inaction… we actually repeat that pattern.”

Skinner reported the abuse to police in 2005, leading Fremlin to plead guilty to indecent assault.

With documents from The Canadian Press

Resources for survivors of sexual assault in Canada

If you or someone you know is struggling with sexual assault or trauma, the following resources are available to support those in crisis:

If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety, you should call 911.

A complete list of sexual assault centres in Canada that offer information, advocacy and counselling is available on the website of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Crisis Centres.

You will find helplines, legal services and locations that offer sexual assault kits in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia. here.

National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: +1 866 925 4419

24-Hour Helpline: 416 597 8808

Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline: +1 833 900 1010

Trans Lifeline: +1 877 330 6366

Sexual Misconduct Support for Current or Former Members of the Armed Forces: +1 844 750 1648

Learn about your rights as a victim here.