My mother sought and received these endorsements several years ago. In publishing this website and revisiting her memoirs, it's clear I need to reconnect with these people, if for no other reason than to ensure I have their titles correct. If you are one of the people quoted below, or know of how I might reach one of these people, please feel free to contact me through this blog, or in the comments below.
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"Haunting.. an awesome, spell-binding testimony of evil. At the end, the expulsion of the white woman who had caused such suffering testifies to extraordinary human tenacity and courage, at a significant crossroads of history."
Onno van der Hart, Ph.D. Professor
President, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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"Compelling ... Taylor’s writing captures in an uncanny way the place and the time and the people, and especially the social calculus of colonialism. It evokes a sensitivity to what Patna must have been like in the late 1930s that I have seldom seen in print. Only George Orwell in his Burmese Days captures and conveys those meanings as subtly as does The Drumming.”
Walter Hauser, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Virginia,
Former Director of the Center for South Asian Studies, U. of Virginia;
historian of Modern India focussing specifically on Bihar in the twentieth century
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"A meticulous account of remembering, both painful and inspiring to read. Oppression and cruelty co-exist with courage and beauty in this exotic world. That the author could gather so much supporting evidence for her recovered memories is the true surprise in this moving book."
Jennifer J. Freyd, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon, and author of Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Abuse (Harvard University Press, 1996), and co-editor of Trauma and Cognitive Science:A Meeting of Minds, Science, and Human Experience. (Haworth Press, 2001).
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"A gripping read...an important case study, for layperson and scholar alike. The former is transported to a distant place in a tumultuous time and introduced to private traumas as they spill into the public, involving both the British and Indian establishment."
Reza Pirbhai (PhD candidate), Historian of South Asia. University of Toronto
(Pirbhai's specialty is the British Raj, on which he lectures.)
...
“I literally could not put the material down. The account provides one of those unique opportunities where an entire community becomes involved in helping the individual survive, and thus a rare opportunity for verification of what is usually a tragic matter with no witnesses.”
Carla Johnson, M.D., F.R.C.P. (Psychiatrist, former Co-Director of the Women's Clinic at the Toronto Hospital, Western Division)
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"In all my work and reading, I have not come across a case like that of Ms Taylor. It is unique in the literature of recovered memory, a reverent and appreciative remembrance of the lives and aspirations of people existing in repression... I recommend the manuscript to anyone interested in the human striving for integrity.”
Adam Crabtree, Ph.D., author of From Mesmer to Freud; Multiple Man; Trance Zero, etc., and one of Canada’s leading experts on dissociative memory.


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