Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir

by Daniel Barban Levin

Overview

An “extraordinary” (Nylon) firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult and the costs paid by its young victims: a group of college roommates
 
“Intense . . . [a tale] of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.”—Salon

The inspiration for the Hulu docuseries Stolen Youth, directed by Zach Heinzerling and co-produced by Daniel Barban Levin

In September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind bars after a conviction during a bitter custody dispute.

Larry Ray arrived at the dorm, a communal house called Slonim Woods 9, and stayed for the whole year. Over the course of innumerable counseling sessions and “family meetings,” the intense and forceful Ray convinced his daughter’s friends that he alone could help them “achieve clarity.” Eventually, Ray and the students moved into a small Manhattan apartment, beginning years of manipulation and abuse, as Ray tightened his control over his young charges through blackmail, extortion, and ritualized humiliation. After a decade of secrecy, Larry Ray was finally indicted on charges of extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and money laundering.

Daniel Barban Levin was one of the original residents of Slonim Woods 9. Beginning the moment Daniel set foot on Sarah Lawrence’s idyllic campus and spanning the two years he spent in the grip of a megalomaniac, this brave, lyrical, and redemptive memoir reveals how a group of friends were led from college to a cult without the world even noticing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593138854
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	256,577
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Daniel Barban Levin holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine. He is the winner of the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Poetry and the Lynn Garnier Memorial Award, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Frost Place, Tent: Creative Writing, the Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar for Writers, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. His writing has appeared in Provincetown Arts, Bat City Review, Sarah Lawrence Review, The Westchester Review, The Offbeat, The Fourth River, and Bennington Review. He lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

1

The alarms kept screaming, and we ignored them. While we lined the path waiting for the all clear, Santos and I collected rocks, which we were piling to build a makeshift wall against the cliff outside our dorm. False alarms were frequent and familiar occurrences at Sarah Lawrence, and I’d grown accustomed to pretending a whole building hadn’t just begun to squawk when I walked past one on the way to class. Our dorms were called Slonim Woods; they squatted at the bottom of a cliff on top of which was a copse of trees—the “woods” for which the dorms were named. In the brisk New York autumn air, herded into the canyon formed by the buildings and the cliff, Santos and I constructed our wall.

All the residents of Slonim were wearing what looked like costumes of our normal selves, having been rushed out of a shower or roused from an afternoon nap. Santos and I were managing a prodigious stack of rocks, what had turned out to be a surprisingly sturdy monument to our boredom. We had no way of knowing how long it would take the firefighters, who were probably as frustrated as we were, to identify which oversensitive alarm had been set off by some toaster crumb just large enough to have become kindling.

“It’s unbelievable,” Santos said, handing me a rock. I considered the cliff for best placement. “What’s happened to them is insane. Talia looks like she’s this scrawny girl or something, but she’s the toughest person I’ve ever known. Growing up in the Bronx was nothing compared to some of the stories she’s told me from the shelter.” Santos and I had been friends ever since we’d been randomly assigned to live together in our first year. He’d been the best roommate you could ask for. He had tough, Dominican parents, which was why, I guessed, he cleaned our whole room practically every day. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink, he didn’t even really listen to music. I did every single one of those things, and tried my best to introduce him to them.

The rock I had just placed on the top of the wall wobbled, a little too big. “In my elementary school, we were building something like this at recess once, and two kids were carrying a heavy rock and it slipped,” I told Santos. “One of them had to have the tip of his finger removed. Everyone always made fun of him after that. I can’t remember why exactly. They said he smelled bad, I remember that. I think they said his finger was rotting or something, and that’s why he smelled.” The alarm continued to wail, muffled through our house’s brick walls. “Do you know Talia’s dad at all? I mean, have you met him?

“No, not besides what she’s told me. I know he was in the marines and everything, and he’s done some intelligence work. When they’ve talked on the phone, Talia’s put him on speaker with us. Me and Isabella.”

I looked up. In the woods on top of the cliff was a ropes course no one used. Mostly people would just sit up there and drink or smoke weed as they watched people stroll by on the path below. In the summer before the school year, our roommate Gabe flew out from California a week early by accident. He tried to secretly camp in this little strip of woods until classes started. He barely avoided getting kicked out of school for that.

“Larry’s really excited to see her again,” Santos continued. “Everything that happened to them is so unjust. He’s really, really smart and has battled through so much.”

“Right.”

“I think that’s why Talia is the way she is. She blows my mind sometimes.”

“He gets here next week, right?” I asked. “He’s staying with us?” The wind blew stiff down the path, dislodging a couple of the more precarious stones. They clattered among the bright yellow leaves at our feet. The air was brisk enough to wear jackets, the sun hot enough to sweat underneath them.

“Yeah, I think he’s going to stay for a little bit while he figures it out. They just haven’t seen each other in so long.”

“That makes sense,” I said. I thought it did. I wondered how high we could build the wall before it would fall. I wanted to build something that would be here long after we’d moved into new dorms, or even after we’d left the school. The alarm stopped. The strange silence it left behind was broken only by the click of Santos placing one last stone on top, and then the clamor of everyone rushing back into their buildings to continue the day. In the year after I graduated from Sarah Lawrence, when I was still going back to visit, I chanced a walk down that path, and I saw the wall we built there, slumped into the cliff behind it. It had been picked apart, perhaps by other students, but it was undeniable evidence. We had been there. It had all really happened.

Editorial Reviews

04/12/2021

Poet Levin debuts with a chilling account of the two years he spent living as part of a cult. Writing in eloquent prose, he describes how such a thing can happen, and why, as he puts it, “The alarms kept screaming, and we ignored them.” Levin’s freshman year at Sarah Lawrence College was like any other student’s, until he met Larry Ray, his classmate Talia’s father, in 2010. Ray lived with his daughter and her friends at their communal dorm, and, claiming to be a Defense Intelligence Agency operative, he ingratiated his way into the group first with relationship advice, and then guilt and intimidation. “You make your world what it is,” he tells Levin, “closed, small, weak, empty, bleak, barren... they don’t see it, but I see it.” Gripped by fear, the friends were eventually subjected to sexual and physical violence, and explicit torture, all by Ray. After two years, Levin finally found the strength to leave, seek therapy, and, with the encouragement of a friend, begin to write his story. (Ray currently awaits trial on federal charges of, among other things, conspiracy, extortion, and sex trafficking.) It’s tragic, but it’s also a powerful portrayal of a young man’s ability to emerge whole from an experience intended to break him. As dark as it is, there’s real beauty in this story. Agent: Chris Clemans, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Disturbing, extremely vulnerable and extraordinary. . . . A biting, observant memoir about his experience, as he excavates the reasons he was so drawn into Ray’s grasp.”—Nylon

“An intense tale of coercion, humiliation, gaslighting, and physical torment. It's also one of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.”—Salon

“Insightful and often heart wrenching . . . This book will be a tremendous help to others who have gone through something similar.”—Bomb

“Daniel Barban Levin’s courageous and honest memoir exposes the evil nature of manipulation and the near impossibility of escape, and his writing reminds us that honesty is the only tool to destroy these monsters. Levin offers us a way out, but only if we have the courage to follow him. This is an extraordinary story of entrapment, determination, and escape.”—Eric Fair, author of Consequence

“This harrowing memoir not only recounts what happened from the observant, insightful poet who lived through it, but also explores the how and why. It’s a moving, lucid testimony, as much about the abuse of power as it is about the power of storytelling.”—Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers

“A deeply honest and viscerally lyrical descent into the self, Levin’s book shines a fluorescent light of masterful, sharp prose on the twisted depths of trauma, and takes our hand as we bear witness to the profane, the absurd, the banal, and the violent, so that we don’t have to navigate that horror alone, as he once did.”—Matt Young, author of Eat the Apple

“With fascinating detail, Slonim Woods 9 takes us on a tour of the lower depths of human vulnerability and manipulation. Levin’s vivid storytelling and poetic sense make it a great read, without ever upstaging its commitment to the slippery, open-ended process of self-discovery and healing.”—Amy Gerstler, author of Scattered at Sea

“In devastating and unforgettable ways, Levin renders trauma into language. Maybe most shocking of all is the beauty of his account—the tenderness of a survivor reaching toward those who are still trapped inside.”—Rebecca Sacks, author of City of a Thousand Gates

“Chilling . . . eloquent . . . a powerful portrayal of a young man’s ability to emerge whole from an experience intended to break him.”—Publishers Weekly

“An unusual, affecting portrait of how post-adolescent power dynamics are susceptible to cultish abuse.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Powerful. . . . A poetic and intimate memoir of a harrowing ordeal. Any reader interested in the workings of cults or the experiences of people in cults will find this book worthwhile.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher

07/02/2021

Levin and his housemates in Slonim Woods 9, a residence house at Sarah Lawrence College, were an offbeat bunch, so they had few qualms about letting Larry Ray (the father of their fellow student Talia) stay at their dorm for a while. But Ray turned out to be a charismatic manipulator and con man who preyed on the insecurities of the bright but vulnerable young students; within a year, Levin and his roommates were living with the man in his Manhattan apartment, where Ray subjected them to extortion, forced labor, and physical, mental, and sexual abuse under the guise of assisting them with personal and psychological problems. Levin recounts his three years within Ray's circle and his gradual self-liberation and recovery, offering a first-hand example of how anyone can be drawn into a cult environment, and how isolation and erosion of self-worth hamper one's ability to recognize and free themselves from an abusive person. Levin's writing is powerful throughout: he doesn't dwell in shame but rather finds a way to make peace with the past and move forward. VERDICT A poetic and intimate memoir of a harrowing ordeal. Any reader interested in the workings of cults or the experiences of people in cults will find this book worthwhile.—Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA

Library Journal

2021-07-14
This unsettling memoir depicts college friends in thrall to one student’s devious, domineering father.

Levin vividly evokes the collegiate atmosphere of the early 2010s, focusing on the bizarre experiences he endured at Sarah Lawrence College. “When I lived there I was a member of what I can now call a cult,” he writes. While living in group housing, several students’ lives were hijacked by Larry Ray, one girl’s father. Initially introduced as “an incredible human being” with national security credentials, he served time in prison due to a vengeful ex-wife’s machinations and involvement in scandals surrounding one-time Rudy Giuliani associate Bernard Kerik. Without much scrutiny, Ray moved in with the students and insinuated himself into their lives. A manipulative charmer, he soon commanded instant obedience. He moved the group to an apartment in Manhattan, increasingly controlling their sexual identities and inner lives, as he noted: “My skill set has been breaking minds, creating loops it’s impossible to get out of….But I also have the ability to unravel the knots people have made in themselves.” The narrative bubbles with tension as readers wonder how Ray will further extend his control over the group members, who were still “pretending we had something private, though nothing, really, was private anymore.” Even when Levin studied in England, he remained preoccupied with Ray. “Something in me,” he writes, “clamored for that feeling: time vanishing, that warmth washing over me, being able to share my secret fears, being told—convinced, rather—that every­thing would be all right.” Levin controls this unsavory tale by contrasting Ray’s bombast and deceptions with his own struggles with depression and identity alongside intense depictions of settings ranging from the bucolic campus to the group’s flashy Manhattan environs. He captures how intense adolescent friendships are vulnerable to manipulation. Sometimes the author’s exactitude becomes tiresome, as he relies on re-created conversations, including Ray’s menacing monologues. (Ray has since been indicted on federal charges pertaining to the events documented here and elsewhere).

An unusual, affecting portrait of how post-adolescent power dynamics are susceptible to cultish abuse.

Kirkus Reviews