Book Review•Storybook｜Sayeka Murata's "Earth Star People" 😱 and the wounded body and mind

I know that I can’t judge the cover to buy a book, but the design of the cover is really important. Sometimes I stare at the label on the bottle in front of a shelf full of red wine, thinking that if the person who designs the wine bottle label will design the cover How nice, of course, and not so exaggerated. Among the various book reviews of "The Planet of the Earth", the most prominent point is that many people warn not to be deceived by the cute cover of this book, especially the cute hedgehog, this book is not cute style! But this hedgehog is really cute👇

This hedgehog is called Piyyut and is a very cute plush hedgehog. Because I also like hedgehogs very much, and I have a lot of hedgehog plush toys, and I raised hedgehogs for a while when I was a child, so I am even more interested in this book. But what I didn't expect was that this book was the one I read this year, and the one that touched the deepest pain in my heart.

Many people say the book is disgusting or the storyline is too outrageous - involving "domestic abuse, sexual assault, incest, cannibalism...", which is beyond the ability of many readers to accept and bear, and for me, it is true , But, always remember, reality can always be more cruel than any description in the novel. Many plots seen in the novel must exist in reality; and there are some in reality, but there may not be in the novel.

First, the book deals with the abuse of the girl Natsuki in her own home. She is the "scapegoat child" in the deformed family environment, and her sister is the "golden child" in the deformed family environment. In such a native family environment, no matter what Natsuki did, she was always beaten and scolded by her mother. The slaughter was a blow to the head, and the abuse was a familiar one. However, not only the mother beats her, but the sister can also kick her and scold her. For children who are completely dependent on their parents for survival, if there is no way to control their own abuse, they can only internalize all the abuse as their own fault, and then take it.

Secondly, a very "respected" handsome teacher is a "sexual predator". "Sexual predators" can always identify exactly which child is vulnerable and afraid to tell parents what happened, just as Ted Bundy can accurately identify his "perfect victim", Natsuki becomes the teacher's "perfect victim". prey". After being sexually harassed by the teacher at school, the teacher also tricked Natsuki into her home for oral sex on the grounds of after-school tutoring...Natsuki, who had no sexual experience at all, didn't understand what happened, but the trama was big enough that her brain at that time was Protect her and take her "soul" out of her body. This is actually a feature shared by groups that have been greatly traumatized, which is depersonalisation . When experiencing trauma, in order to protect itself, the brain will pull out the spirit that seems to be "spirit" during the trauma, thus producing a spiritual ascension. Get up while looking down at your own body going through a traumatic feeling. This kind of withdrawal can slightly alleviate the shock of trauma. In fact, it is also a choice made by the brain under the "escape" command.

It has to be said that author Sayaka Murata really understands trauma and the functioning of the brain's escape mechanism when trauma occurs, so accurately and heartbreakingly describes the sexual assault Natsuki experienced from a school teacher. However, because of the teacher's beautiful image and deceptive nature, not only no one in the school believed Natsuki, but the mother at home naturally blamed her (it seems that Fang Siqi's shadow is seen here).

Home and school are the most basic social environment for a child, and neither of these two environments can give a sense of security. On the contrary, when they give aggression and abuse, Natsuki only has a little hedgehog as a friend and her imagination. She imagined that she was from another planet, and eventually, she had to leave Earth and go back to her own alien planet. This thought gave her a sense of security. The one who shares the same thoughts with her is her cousin Yuu. In this way, Natsuki always took the little hedgehog by his side, and ordered a "doll kiss" when he met his cousins.

Perhaps, there are still many readers who think such a plot is absurd. However, a group of readers who have been hurt in childhood will say that this is not the case -

Like me, many people have been severely injured in childhood. This always reminds me of the lyrics in Angela Chang's "Return": "Who has few injuries/We are not all the same". Maybe boys and girls deal with trauma differently, but in fact, as children, it is always difficult to run away. My way of doing it is to think of the stuffed animals as my friends, talk to them, and think that one day I will finally be able to leave . At this point, I understand Natsuki in particular.

So, gradually, I got a lot of plush toys🧸, each of them is important, and I can’t bear to leave them, so that everyone around me thinks I just love plush toys, including my parents, but they don’t know, plush toys The role played at the beginning.

When it comes to childhood scars, many people may say they don't remember them. But memories of trauma are not just buried deep in our brains, our bodies have memories too (experts). Just like Natsuki felt that her mouth was dirty after she was tricked into a teacher's house and forced to have oral sex, things that use her mouth, such as eating, are difficult to carry out, and it is also a kind of body memory. Many times, when things have passed, we will temporarily forget the memory of the body and continue to live, even thinking that we have forgotten it. However, in an inadvertent moment, suddenly that part of the body is touched in the same way, the terrible memory will be Out of the body, into the mind.

There are many episodes of parents or adults in today's TV dramas where parents or adults keep their children in a "little dark room", and it is expressly stated that this will cause great trauma to the child. However, I was thrown into the "little black room". These injuries all came from a feeling that should have been the most trusted and most secure child-the mother. Whether it is a three-year-old or a four-year-old, when they are thrown into the windowless and locked "little black toilet", the shock and damage to their souls cannot be described in words. However, the reason for being treated this way is simple, I just wanted my mother's attention, so I burst into tears. What's more, a three or four-year-old child, even if she did something wrong, deserves to be treated like this by her mother. Sometimes, a woman who lacks motherhood becomes a mother. She doesn't need any reason to insult and abuse her children physically and verbally, and then selectively forget them for the next few decades, playing the role of a good wife and a good wife. The role of the mother or even the victim, and the previous own behavior is blamed on the child's "mistake".

I never knew what this childhood experience did to me. Under the cover of my mother and my own fear, no one knew about this experience, only myself and my body. I only knew that after the age of three, I was not very good. I love to cry, because when I cry, I will be thrown into the dark, one-person black toilet again and again and locked up (Lesson learned). It turned out that my silence was not only a way for me to "protect" myself from being locked up again, but also a convenient way to protect my mother's "great image" - no one knew what she did, still, always The mother who best educates her daughter.

Until, at a certain stage in my life, when I found myself walking around the world with a stuffed toy, there was a moment or two when my body was lifted by the wrist, which reminded me of the pain in my childhood. , you can even temporarily enter a state of completely inexplicable fear, shock and untimely full body alertness, and then slowly understand that the memory on the body and the scars on the mind will always be there, and I don’t know when they will appear. The pain I had in the past slowly pushed me down a path of "exile" that I may have never really realized, and it was for the same reason that I left home one step at a time.

I never knew what it was like to be "homesick", but I was often forced to say "homesick" on the phone... Otherwise, how could a daughter who has been "perfectly educated" miss home? My plush toys are my home.

Therefore, I love the book "The Planet of the Earth" so much, although the plots of sexual assault, incest, and cannibalism are indeed unbearable, but it seems that Natsuki's experience is a microcosm that is many, many times more tragic than mine. But no one can or should reduce another person's suffering to insignificance. I try to understand what Natsuki did, even her choice of asexual marriage after that, etc. Everything makes sense. It's just that many, many injured people are not so lucky. In life, they may not be able and have no conditions to receive psychological treatment, counseling and help to get out of the pain in the past, but continue to be treated with physical and mental injuries. The victim manipulated, played with, and reversed black and white again and again...

So, I am lucky. I would like to believe that many of the children who suffered various physical and mental injuries in childhood are people from another planet. Your truth does not belong to that deformed family, or to the thing that is forcibly called "love", and does not belong to A society that turns a blind eye to domestic violence.

"You are not from this world." If there is such a place, it may be the roof of the world - Tibet. There, the wounds have grown into scars and bloomed beautiful flowers - this song is for all those who are hurt ❤️