Camp Paradox

A Memoir of Stolen Innocence

By: Barbara Graham

Narrated by: Angela Starling

Length: 1 hr and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

This haunting yet wry coming-of-age memoir set at an all-girls summer camp fast-forwards decades into the future as Barbara Graham grapples with the knowledge that the "love affair" she believed she'd shared with her female camp counselor in the 1960s fits every definition of sexual abuse. The book will appeal to anyone who has experienced a betrayal of trust or conflated love and abuse.

Barbara Graham's latest book, Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother, was a New York Times best seller. Her essays have appeared in many magazines, including Glamour, More, National Geographic Traveler, O the Oprah Magazine, Psychotherapy Networker, Self, Time, Utne Reader, and Vogue and have been collected in numerous anthologies. She has written for websites such as AARP, Beliefnet, Grandparents.com, the Huffington Post, and NPR, among others, and is a columnist for PurpleClover.com. Barbara's plays have been published by Dramatists' Play Service and produced off-Broadway and at theaters around the country.

This is a short audiobook published by Shebooks - high-quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.

©2014 Barbara Graham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This beautifully written account of a girl's soul-shattering experience is a teaching story. Graham shares her journey from trauma to transcendence and reminds us that facing pain honestly transforms it into redemption." (Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and The Green Boat)

"Barbara Graham's memoir Camp Paradox is a clear, insightful, and important story that needs to be heard. Although we've made great strides in exposing the sexual abuse of children, the sexual abuse of girls by women is still a subject rarely talked about. But this is not only a book about suffering. It's also a book about healing - about reclaiming our selves and becoming whole again. Camp Paradox is engaging from the opening paragraph all the way through to the suspenseful and rewarding ending." (Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal and many books of poetry, most recently, Like a Beggar)

"This eye-opening story of violation and love, romance and rape, is unlike any memoir that I know of. Witty, heartbreaking, yet finally hopeful, Graham tells her initiation story of summer camp sex and betrayal with clear-eyed compassion and unsparing truth." (Mark Matousek, author of Sex, Death, Enlightenment)

Overall pretty good

I felt as though the ending was rushed. Sad story and the narrator did a great job.

Camp Paradox

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book, love the characters, story & the narration was very good.

just wish it was longer!

I'm very proud of the person standing up to the bully. alot of times, it takes maturity and age to realize WHO is your abuser and I had to realize at 25 years old that mine was my own sister. what a revelation.

From Victim to Survivor to Overcoming

Powerful novel about a 14 year old Female who was groomed, and taken advantage of by a much older woman.
After decades of shame and the inability to internalize the trauma, the author describes how she was able to not only come to terms with what happened, but also overcome her trauma.

The narrator does a fabulous job.

Eye Opening, But Not Surprising

I found this to be, as the title above says, eye opening, but not surprising. Puberty is already difficult for kids in so many ways, I can't imagine how this experience made it more confusing. Not bashing any serial preference, just knowing that teens already have it difficult, and then to find out it was against the law, as she mentioned pedophile behavior being exposed all over the place. Good narration.

Very real

Down to earth telling of sexual predation of a minor and it’s fallout. Examines the tricky realization by the author that she was a victim. Author describes well the multitude of feelings that happen while being manipulated in this type of relationship

Excellent

A very enlightening book. It is told in a way that allows the reader to enter the experience feel the pain, and the closure. Thank you so much to the author for sharing!

I applaud Barbara Graham.

What courage it must have taken to share this story!! Incredible. Barbara Graham had no reservations in making it known that sexual predators can also be women, as she was a victim.

So what.

While the narrator was indeed violated, abused and molested by this woman leaving her with much shame and confusion- i too was confused because the event didn’t seem to traumatize her until until work research into the trauma of other victims of sexual abuse led her to realize what had happened to her after which she seemed to exaggerate and revel
In her victimhood, and pretend that the event had caused some deep harm in her life, not made evident in the storytelling- unless you count her reliance on psychics and healers as evidence that this event led her down the path to become another self-indulgent, privileged white woman.

Interesting and concise.

A short story of repressed victimhood, the writer’s new currency. But still interesting and well performed.