Book Review for Unclutter: A Survivor’s Story by Winnie D. Pagora

I received this book for free. This does not impact my review in any shape or form. 

Uncluttered: A Survivor’s Story, by Winnie D. Pagora, is an inspirational story about a young woman who overcomes her sexual trauma and goes on to help others going through a similar pain. The book introduces Tina Lauren, a student who had her life nearly stripped away after defending herself against Nicholas Parker, a boy with powerful connections. After being abandoned by friends and ostracized by her community, she meets Dr. Nakamura and a few others, with whom she begins to rebuild herself, slowly and steadily. 

Tina’s story reads almost like a fairytale. Although it was painful to read (I find it quite laughable that her former friends were now trying to get her to speak on the importance of consent), I appreciated how many genuine social supports flocked around Tina. I loved the relationship Tina had with Jai and Nate and Madison. I liked how supportive Ekon was in helping her with her mental health, even though he might not understand all of her experiences. Moreover, I loved how her parents became more supportive of her as well (go Dad for the win). Still, there is an element of realism in Tina’s story, which I did also appreciate; not everything is going to get resolved within the span of a year. Whether or not Nicholas, Pete, or any of the individuals get charged is really none of our business; if anything, our focus remains on Tina and her empowerment. True, she’s healing, and it’ll take time. Nonetheless, while we might not get the perfect happily ever after we were hoping for, that’s okay. I loved how community partners worked with her, from Dr. Nakamura’s therapy sessions, to Officer Hussein’s quick and effective responses, to even the SANE nurse who told her that a rape kit could be taken at any point in time. 

But even without the ending, this still feels like a fairytale. This might sound horrible, but this book is the idealistic setting for healing from trauma, even though Tina had to suffer through even more trauma (fuck Pete and Nicholas and Harriet and Laila). A lot of people who experience this might not talk for a long, long while, and even if they do, there’s a chance not everyone will believe them, especially if the figure is a powerful, popular figure in the community. And true, it did take Tina a while to get her resources together, but as someone who works in community mental health and with the police, again, this is the ideal. Communication issues are a motherfucker, and of course, not everyone in the community knows one another; I was a case manager and I’m still finding new resources. More unfortunately, I’m from the South, and as many of you may or may not know, many people from the South are reluctant about matters that are supposedly “private”. It isn’t appropriate to talk about sex in general, much less having safe sex and consent.

The tone of everyone supporting Tina reads straight off of workbooks like The Courage to Heal. It got to the point where I thought Madison was a robot and Nate was this hacker fairy godmother who could make life a living hell for the villains with a wave of his technological wand. That being said, it was a feel good story, and while I wished I knew what’d happened with the villains of this story, I’m glad I was able to read Tina’s. As such, I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.