5 Stars on Amazon!
Praise for What They Couldn’t Take…
I’ll be forever changed by this book. The courage and bravery it took to write each word is remarkable.
Adira has turned her trauma into hope and one she uses to help others find the words to share their truth and heal. This book is hard to read, it’s hard to hear about unimaginable cruelty, torture, and suffering. I beg you to not turn away. In the midst of the pain, a clear and resounding message of resilience and hope rings loudly on each page. Adira survived it and it’s our responsibility to listen so we can prevent someone else from enduring this pain.
Melissa Snow
Executive Director – Child Sex Trafficking Programs
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Adira James has written a first-person account of her parents’ trafficking her as very young child in the insanely lucrative child prostitution and pornography rings active in the Detroit suburbs in the seventies and eighties. Hers was not a childhood; it was torture and slavery and brainwashing at the hands of evil incarnate. That Adira survived with her sense of self in tact is a monumental achievement; publishing this memoir is her victory lap.
As painful as is this to read, please do not take a pass. Silence is complicit. No matter how abhorrent, evil must be exposed in order to defeat it. – Marney Rich Keenan
It’s unfathomable that parents would subject their child to prostitution and pornography for prestige and wealth. Equally unimaginable is Adira’s unwavering dedication to overcoming the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual trauma she’s suffered from this horrific abuse.
As a medical professional I am amazed at Adira’s recovery and am grateful for her extensive research and compilation of resources for identifying, nurturing and protecting victims of this nightmarish abuse. As a parent I struggled with multiple raw emotions: shock, disbelief, anger, dismay, sorrow and eventual awe of Adira’s acceptance and forgiveness of what transpired against her. She is a Warrior, Poet, and Sage who has opened my eyes and heart in unparalleled ways.
Read this book a chapter at a time. Allow yourself time to process the content, emotions and response each elicits. Heal with the innocence and transformative power of her poetry. And with a new awareness, mimic Adira’s courage to intervene. – A. Biddinger
This is by no means an easy read. I am going to recommend this book to every medica/dental, educational, social-worker, professional that I know – anyone who works with children needs to recognize the signs of the horrific abuse detailed herein. It will take almost as much courage to read this book as it took for the brave woman to write about her experience. – W.C.
Human trafficking has received significant attention in the media recently to increase awareness. This book talks about a different kind of human trafficking – one that is perpetrated by the victims family. I was completely unaware that this sort of hell actually existed. The author does an incredible job of explaining in detail her experiences. She does this in a beautiful manner that demonstrates to the reader her incredible journey without brutalizing the reader with too much detail and graphic information regarding her experiences. I would highly recommend this book as a testimony to the human spirit and strength, as well as the ability to overcome incredible adversity as the author was able to survive this experience and turn it into something positive by writing this book, and providing strength and courage and hope to her readers. – Corrie Conroy
This is a beautifully written book on a hard but important subject matter. Adira shines a light on her dark childhood, escapism and ultimately her survival. The courage it took to make it through all those years and to write a memoir is undeniable! I enjoyed the way the book was written and the different art forms she used to deal with the trauma. This book is a perfect example of keeping your eyes open and advocating for children! – Christine Music
Do you understand that this is not fiction? This is a real life. My emotions overflowed as I read. I cried and I retched. My silent moments throughout the day are filled with scenes and words from these pages. Above the shock at human cruelty, above the awe at a baby’s will to survive, I am mesmerized that Adira could live in and through these horrors and still be filled with love for her fellow humans. How?
I will be observant of signs that a child needs to be saved. These signs are not hidden, if we want to see them. That child wants us to see them, but I think most of us don’t know what to do. There are resources in the book to guide us.
This book will save someone. – Alla Dihes
Beautifully written book! The bravery it took to write it and re live the most horrible events. It will forever leave a mark on me.- Jenny
This is an empowering story of a child’s personal hell. Necessary to make people aware of the truth of what really goes on in many children’s lives. Strongly written, and in the end, encouraging to know they can’t always take everything from you. – Heather Buie
This painful memoir outlines the gruesome sexual, physical, and emotional abuse James suffered from the age of two to twelve. Set in an affluent and idyllic Detroit neighborhood spanning the 1980’s, her account is shocking and beyond heartbreaking to read.
Orchestrated by the two people who should protect her, Adira’s parents not only inflicted the abuse but promoted it, by putting their child in the throes of a prominent sex trafficking ring. Despite the graphic and unfathomable occurrences, James unabashedly describes her childhood horrors with an articulate and gentle tone. She interlaces poems and school assignments throughout the chapters, which again, is heartbreaking and terrifying real. A little girl enduring violent molestations while using what tools and what ‘normal’ experiences she has – journaling and school assignments – to simply survive.
It takes a heroic soul to share this story. While this is one of the most traumatizing memoirs I’ve ever read, I’m eternally thankful to Adira James for trusting me (the reader) with the atrocious testaments of her childhood. Her bravery and sheer will is immeasurable. – M.W.
There’s this common misconception that human trafficking only happens for mid to late teenagers and that the abusers are mere strangers. A lot of these stories fight against this stigma. It can and does happen in a home to children by their own family.
Adira James shares her story through vivid flashbacks and trauma that can never really go away. She was abused by her parents, extended family members, and eventually sold to men by her parents. James was able to survive her childhood through perseverance, dissociating, her childlike imagination, and escaping to the outside world whenever it was convenient. Her purpose of What they Couldn’t Take is to share the possibility of hope in utter darkness. Her techniques include writing, moving meditation, therapeutic practices, and artistic expression. She also makes sure you are equipped to see the signs of sex trafficking that is done in plain sight to children.
James provides her story, and her advice to the children and women stuck in human trafficking as a way to convey that she and other women are not afraid of speaking out against human trafficking. – Review by Sierra Jackson – Bookstr.com “These 10 Memoirs Share Their Experience of Human Trafficking“
One of the most honest and insightful memoirs I’ve ever read, and regarding the most difficult of subjects,…child abuse and familial trafficking. And, while I wouldn’t have faulted the author one bit, had she been vindictive, she manages to write with a remarkable sense of restraint and poise. Ms. James recounts her earliest years, and the unspeakable acts committed against her by the very people who should have protected her at all costs…her parents. Sadly, the greater community at large also failed her, either due to indifference, or simply not recognizing the subtle (and sometimes NOT so subtle) signs of child abuse. – Reader
Through her story, Ms. James increases the reader’s awareness of the issue, and includes multiple tips and resources for anyone who has suffered from similar experiences. She has also shared examples of disciplines that have helped her with her own personal healing. I would be remiss to mention one more thing that really made an impression on me,…the book is peppered with drawings and poetry selections, written in the author’s youth, which display such keen intelligence and natural talent, that I couldn’t help but wonder where that might have led young Adira had her parents recognized and nurtured her gift. But, I’m so happy that Ms. James intuitively had survivor’s skills, and found healing outlets, allowing her to share her voice with us now. May she always feel safe and protected, and have all the happiness in life she deserves. – Lisa W.
As a survivor of familial child trafficking, I am so grateful for this book. I feel like I’ve found the book I’ve been searching for my entire life. I’m grateful to Adira for writing her memoir, and I’m so grateful to my friend … for sending me this book. I’m beyond grateful. – Grace
Wonderful. Such a touching story about a young girl overcoming trauma and abuse. Inspiring. – Kelly
Great read. A glimpse in a tragic subject, Beautifully written. – Bravery
I hesitate to use the first words that come to me – unimaginable, shocking, unbearable – because Adira James has lived these events, and one of the gifts of this book is to remind that these awful abuses are also a part of the human experience. Another reviewer mentioned that it takes courage to read this book – I hear that. As a boy who heard too much about his mother’s abuse, I became a man who tensed up when girlfriends and wives started to disclose things they had gone through. I mention this because Adira James writes with extraordinary care for the reader. She deftly manages to share the terrifying world of a child’s exploitation while never abandoning that child; she brings forward her innocence, her playfulness, and creativity in poems, drawings, observations, associations, and the positive memories that sustained he. As James lays out the unfinished business of forgiveness and speaking back to the ghosts of the past, and the unfinished road to her recovery, she never tries to make meaning of her experiences by shocking the reader or asking for their pity. She writes, “I do know the abuse stops with me. The pain stops with me.” What we get instead is the vulnerability of someone courageous enough to sort through these events without posturing or bravado. By incorporating research to contextualize her experiences, and by providing a guide for how we can spot signs of child abuse, she removes the facts of familial sex trafficking from their secrecy and isolation. She helps us face something it’s really difficult to look at, and as a result maybe we’re more likely to lean into helping children we’re concerned about rather than turning a blind eye. – P.D. Barron
Adira’s story is a powerful example of resilience and hope, beautifully told. – JNanos
I have read books like this that left me heavy, feeling “dirty,” or somehow hopeless and sullied for the experience. This is not that book. While the author tackles heavy subject matter, it is done tastefully, intermittently, with discretion, and shared through a flowing, creative, and inviting style of writing. There is an ebb and flow in her telling that makes it work. This author is sensitive, integrated, authentic, and gifted as someone who is poetic, inspirational, and teaches through her story as the book unfolds. She tells her truth in a way that invites us to go on her journey with her. Periodically, she communicates with the reader during her writing, which I love. She does not leave us behind or use us as garbage receptacles to contain her unhealed places. She has worked her work, or at least she has healed far enough that she is wise in how she shares it. I could “see” the people and circumstances in her life and “hear” the thoughts of the younger her and the ways her imagination and resiliency pulled her through. The author did not drag the reader through the detailed horrors of every violation she had to endure. But she does say it – honestly, poignantly, yet tolerably. At no point did I become overwhelmed, and I also did not feel like there were loose ends with missing information I wished I could know.
This is a page-turner. I read it in one sitting.
I appreciate the way she designed the conclusion, slowly easing the reader into that moment when the book will end. I was ready to say goodbye because she crafted the book so I would be. She includes resources and words of encouragement for those who may be looking for ways to get help. I read through each one, making notes, and feeling positive about the entire reading experience. I tagged it with a Post-It-Note, writing a reminder that this is an excellent resource, gift, or loaner for anyone who wants to learn more about familial trafficking. I feel better prepared to help trafficking survivors through my job, as a volunteer, or anywhere else I may come into contact with those on their journey to freedom.
Thank you, Adira James! – Kally Smith
Praise for Sunbeams Through Blankets…
Sunbeams Through Blankets is another awe inspiring book by Adira James. In this all color self help memoir, we are able to see her moving therapeutic artwork, along with her expressive poetry, stories and letters about her harrowing childhood, and amazing advise and techniques on how to heal from trauma. Ms James is a true warrior and wants to celebrate the warrior in all of us. – Warrior-Consultant
Adira is a remarkable woman, and her willingness to share her story is a gift to us all. – JNanos
The book I’ve been searching for all my life. I can’t thank Adira enough for writing this. Familial child trafficking is far more common than our data shows, and yet there is virtually nothing written or researched out there about it, unless created by survivors. So many of us don’t survive. – Grace
Adira James 