The I Index

I Cried to Dream Again: Trafficking, Murder, and Deliverance — A Memoir

Top of the pile

91

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

91/100

Critics

91/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Sara Kruzan, Cori Thomas

Publisher:

Pantheon

Date:

May 10, 2022

At once disturbing and empowering, the memoir of a courageous woman who was abused, groomed, and trafficked for sex from age eleven to age sixteen, who then killed her trafficker/father figure and was sentenced as a juvenile to life in prison without parole.

What The Reviewers Say

Nadia Owusu,
The New York Time Book Review
Kruzan’s memoir, written with the author and playwright Thomas, is a cogent and moving firsthand account of how systems fail to protect some of the most vulnerable among us. In a poignant chapter, Kruzan describes several suicide attempts.
Jane Constantineau,
The New York Journal of Books
The narrator’s voice in Kruzan’s story is difficult to define. She uses sophisticated words and ideas to describe the horrors of her life as a pre-teen that she could not possibly have known then. She admits that many of her memories have been suppressed and that her mind went someplace else during much of her abuse.
Courtney Eathorne,
Booklist
Courageous and unforgettable.

Kirkus
Activist Kruzan debuts with a stirring account of her harrowing experience as a victim of child sex trafficking...Writing with power and clarity, she asserts 'the most important reqiurement for preventing the sexual exploitation of...victims of trafficking is empathy.' Her testimony rings out as a searing critique of a broken criminal justice system and a galvanizing call to the end the violence it permits..