My Life in Song: Processing Grief Through the 1992 Hit Disney Musical, “Newsies”

CW: physical abuse, animal abuse, self-harm

I was seven in 1992, the year Newsies came out and the year I began to have suicidal thoughts at summer camp. Watching my second-grade peers jump rope from the bench where I camped out during recess, I didn’t have the words for it, only the sensation of being disappeared by the living; parental neglect had long since stolen my voice, muted me into a ghost who could observe but never participate.

Newsies is a tale of singing newsboys and well-choreographed dance numbers, yes, but it is also one of children escaping the crushing grip of their oppressors. I understood profoundly the experience of being abused like Jack Kelly and the Gang were by the uncaring, megalomaniacal adults in their lives; one day, when I had more power, maybe I would complement their protest songs with my own.

The World Will Know: This song is an address from survivors to their abusers: Your world will feel the fire and finally, finally know. It’s about exposing adults to other adults and expecting the acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

Abuse by my parents generally passed unrecognized or flagrantly ignored by the world at large. Many times during playdates, my mother knocked my little friend Tommy to the ground and began licking his face. His mother watched the display though did not intervene while my mother dragged her tongue along the ridge of Tommy’s jawline. No one mentioned it being…