Praise for I Am Not a
Juvenile Delinquent
“Sharon Charde has written a big-hearted, beautiful book, with the light touch of a poet and the deep insights of a humanist. You won’t easily forget her or her girls.”
—Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book and The Orchid Thief
“Charde’s soulful and beautifully written book deepens our understanding of incarcerated girls and the institutions that control their lives. Woven through the narrative is Charde’s own story about her difficulty managing the grief caused by the death of her son. As we read, we realize the both the author and the girls are in the midst of trauma and grieving. We understand that, at core, this is a story about despair and empowerment and, in Charde’s case, a transcendent response. I recommend I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent to anyone who works with girls or in detention facilities and to the much broader audience, I mean all of us, who wants to be able to turn sorrow into something meaningful.”
—Mary Pipher, author of Women Rowing North, Reviving Ophelia, and Writing to Change the World
“Vulnerability. Compassion. Transparency. Inclusion, Courage. Beautiful concepts, important buzzwords, but living them is an entirely different matter. Sharon Charde has lived them. Her book, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent, is proof. In it, she maps the journey she shares with troubled girls in her writing class at a residential treatment facility. A masterful, poetic storyteller, Charde is able to break our hearts and heal them at the same time. The way she weaves the stories of her own loss and grief, with the loss and grief of the girls is stunning. What links Charde and the girls—and all of us—is the human struggle to make meaning out of trauma and spin it into the gold of transformation. Anyone who has suffered and cares about our world (that probably includes everyone) will be moved and changed by this book.”
—Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of Omega Institute and author of the New York Times bestseller Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, and Marrow: Love, Loss, and What Matters Most
“Sharon Charde, grief-stricken and adrift after the death of her son, begins leading poetry workshops at a residential treatment center for girls. Though strangers at first, the group soon forms bonds as a space for the stories of love, grief, addiction, trauma, and connection blossoms. No singular story emerges.
“Told in chronological fragments, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent is a heartfelt, emotional tribute to the transformative power of human connection. This is not an easy story. Honest, at times brutal, the stories the girls tell, and the stories Charde recounts of her relationships with the girls over a ten year period, shirk redemption. Instead, they are relentlessly raw, strong, stories that remind us both of our own powerlessness and capacity for connection. The book’s power lies in that impossible, entirely true contradiction. I loved it.”
—Tessa Fontaine, author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in
Death-Defying Acts
“This stunning memoir, written with the eye, ear and imagery of a poet, takes the reader through a grieving mother’s journey toward healing—as she reaches out to others who, like her, have been shattered by unspeakable grief. Charde encourages young incarcerated women to find their voices and to write and share their haunting life stories, as she shares hers with them. A testament to the healing power of writing, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent shows us that lead can be alchemized into gold when we trust enough to share our deepest secrets on the page.”
—Carol Henderson, author of Losing Malcolm: A Mother’s Journey Through Grief and Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers
“Poet and memoirist Sharon Charde, having grieved for eight years the mysterious death of her young son, goes into a residence for girls paroled for drug addiction, to write with them. Writing together in order to heal the troubled young women, Charde finds healing happening within herself: ‘…these girls showed me the stranger of myself, the locked up one who’d longed to spring free…these delinquent girls called bad by the world…would soon become the definition of real to me.’ She takes us close inside the girl’s lives. To read I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent is to find oneself one of ‘the girls,’ and then to realize their journey is also the reader’s own. Go there with her; you, too, will be changed.”
—Pat Schneider, author of Writing Alone and with Others and How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice and founder of Amherst Writers & Artists
“Sharon Charde has written an eye-opener of a book about listening to the youthful missteps that shape our lives while reflecting on how they shape our futures. She gives the reader an unflinching look at her subjects—her Touchstone Girls—that shows her love, respect, and deep frustration in an unjust world as she reflects her optimism and fears for them in an open-hearted yet realistic way.
“Workshopping with her over an intense decade, her poetry students guide her to the dark side of the world of drugs, rape, incest, and poverty…forcing the author to come to grips with every parent’s worst nightmare—the loss of a child due to addiction, violence, and in her own agonizing case, the unsolved cause of death of her newly adult son. Written with sparkling retrospection and a plain-spoken honesty, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent is a book to be trusted, valued, and shared.”
—Glen Finland, author of Next Stop: A Memoir of Family
“Sharon Charde’s writing about trauma grabs us and forces us to feel what we most want to avoid feeling. She brings us back to feeling and thereby back to a fuller life.”
—Jessica Stern, bestselling author of My War Criminal, Denial, Terror in the Face of God, and ISIS
“Sharon Charde explores how grief gives way to insight even when healing cannot happen and voids cannot be filled. Her crystalline writing offers glimpses of hope in unlikely places. She paints a vivid picture of how connecting with others, however different they may be, can be a step toward making a whole life. It is a worthy portrait of her own.”
—Mary E. Hunt, Co-Director, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)
“Sharon Charde’s delicate strength, her affection for her students (and theirs for her), her passion for the power and influence of poetry, will enrich any reader’s life, as it has the lives of the young women she inspired. Her new book should be required reading for everyone. It is marvelous.”
—Abigail Thomas, author of Safekeeping, A Three Dog Life, What Comes Next and How to Like It
I Am Not a
Juvenile
Delinquent
Also by Sharon Charde
POEMS
Bad Girl At The Altar Rail
Four Trees Down From Ponte Sisto
Branch In His Hand
After Blue
Incendiary
Unhinged
I Am Not a
Juvenile
Delinquent
How Poetry Changed a Group of
At-Risk Young Women
Sharon Charde
Coral Gables
…for every one of my girls, always.
Copyright © 2020 Sharon Charde
Cover illustration by Peter Seward
Interior Layout Design: Jermaine Lau
Author photo by Jo Eldredge Morissey
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