Too Afraid To Cry: Memoir Of A Stolen Childhood

Told at first through the frank eyes of a child whose life was irretrievably changed after being "adopted" into a German Lutheran family, Too Afraid to Cry braids piercingly lyrical verse with spare prose to tell an intensely personal story of abuse and trauma. After years of suffering as a dark-skinned "outsider," Eckermann reveals her courageous efforts to reconcile with her birth family and find acceptance within their Indigenous community. 

Too Afraid to Cry offers a mirror to America and Canada's own dark history of coerced adoption of Native American children, and the violence inflicted on our continent's Indigenous peoples.