Books

Title: A False Report: A True Story Of Rape In America

Author: Christian T Miller, Ken Armstrong

Description: Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true crime story of a teenager charged with lying about having been raped—and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth.

Title: A Stolen Life

Author: Jaycee Dugard

Description: A Memoir is a true crime book by American kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard about the 18 years she spent while sequestered and enslaved with her captors in Antioch, California. The memoir dissects what she did to survive and cope mentally with extreme abuse.

Title: A Thousand Acres

Author: Jane Smiley

Description: This powerful novel centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will, which sets in motion a chain of events that brings dark truths to light.

Title: Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence

Author: Philip W. Cook 

Description: An award-winning investigative journalist provides a disturbing new look at an underreported type of domestic violence–the abuse of men.

Title: All the Rage

Author: Courtney Summers

Description: With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women after an act of sexual violence, forcing us to ask ourselves: In a culture that refuses to protect its young girls, how can they survive?

Title: Ask: Building Consent Culture

Author: Kitty Stryker

Description: In Ask, Kitty Stryker assembles a retinue of writers, journalists, and activists to examine how a cultural politic centered on consent can empower us outside the bedroom, whether it’s at the doctor’s office, interacting with law enforcement, or calling out financial abuse within radical communities. More than a collection of essays, Ask is a testimony and guide on the role that negated consent plays in our lives, examining how we can take those first steps to reclaim it from institutionalized power.

Title: Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It

Author: Kate Harding

Description: Combining in-depth research with practical knowledge, Asking for It makes the case that twenty-first century America—where it’s estimated that out of every 100 rapes only 5 result in felony convictions—supports rapists more effectively than victims. Harding offers ideas and suggestions for addressing how we as a culture can take rape much more seriously without compromising the rights of the accused.

Title: Asking for It: the haunting novel from a celebrated voice in feminist fiction

Author: Louise O’Neill

Description: Asking For It is a powerful story about the devastating effects of rape and public shaming, told through the awful experience of a young woman whose life is changed forever by an act of violence.

Title: At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

Author: Danielle McGuire

Description: In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against Black women and added fire to the growing call for change. 

Title: Bad Feminist

Author: Roxane Gay

Description: In these funny and insightful essays, Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Title: Beads: A Memoir About Falling Apart And Putting Yourself Back Together 

Author: Rachel Brooks

Description: Beads is the harrowing story of a rape victim determined to become a survivor by putting her life back together. It details her journey after suffering a brutal attack, confronting the devastating justice system, and ultimately discovering the other side of trauma: forgiveness and peace.

Title: Believe Me

Author: Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman

Description: In Believe Me, contributors ask and answer the crucial question: What would happen if we didn’t just believe women, but acted as though they matter? If we take women’s experiences of online harassment seriously, it will transform the internet. If we listen to and center survivors, we could revolutionize our systems of justice. If we believe Black women when they talk about pain, we will save countless lives. With contributions from many of the most important voices in feminism today, Believe Me is an essential roadmap for the #MeToo era and beyond.

Title: Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight

Author: The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe

Description: This is the true story of how a small group of courageous journalists uncovered child abuse on a vast scale—and held the Catholic Church to account. Betrayal is a ground-breaking work of investigative journalism, now brought brilliantly to life on the screen in the major movie Spotlight.

Title: Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media

Author: Nickie D. Phillips

Description: Beyond Blurred Lines traces ways that sexual violence is collectively processed, mediated, negotiated, and contested by exploring public reactions to high-profile incidents and rape narratives in popular culture.

Title: Blood Water Paint

Author: Joy McCullough

Description: Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father’s paint. She chose paint. By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome’s most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost.

Title: Boy Toy

Author: Barry Lyga

Description: Josh Mendel has a secret. Unfortunately, everyone knows what it is. Five years ago, Josh’s life changed. Drastically. And everyone in his school, his town—seems like the world—thinks they understand. But they don’t—they can’t. And now, about to graduate from high school, Josh is still trying to sort through the pieces. First there’s Rachel, the girl he thought he’d lost years ago. She’s back, and she’s determined to be part of his life, whether he wants her there or not.Then there are college decisions to make, and the toughest baseball game of his life coming up, and a coach who won’t stop pushing Josh all the way to the brink. And then there’s Eve. Her return brings with it all the memories of Josh’s past. It’s time for Josh to face the truth about what happened.

Title: Campus Sexual Assault: College Women Respond

Author: Lauren J. Germain

Description: In Campus Sexual Assault, Lauren J. Germain focuses attention on the post–sexual assault experiences of twenty-six college women. She reframes conversations about sexual violence and student agency on American college campuses by drawing insight directly from the stories of how survivors responded individually to attacks, as well as how and why peers, family members, and school, medical, and civil authorities were (or were not) engaged in addressing the crimes.

Title: Consent on Campus: A Manifesto

Author: Donna Freitas

Description: Freitas advocates for teaching not just how to consent, but why it’s important to care about consent and to treat one’s sexual partners with dignity and respect. Consent on Campus is a call to action for university administrators, faculty, parents, and students themselves, urging them to create cultures of consent on their campuses, and offering a blueprint for how to do it.

Title: Dear Sister: Letters From Survivors Of Sexual Violence

Author: Lisa Factora-Borchers, Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Description: Dear Sister shares the lessons, memories, and vision of over fifty artists, activists, mothers, writers, and students who share their stories of survival or what it means to be an advocate and ally to survivors. Written in an epistolary format, this multi-generational, multi-ethnic collection of letters and essays is a moving journey into the hearts and minds of the survivors of rape, incest, and other forms of sexual violence, written directly to and for other survivors.

Title: Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies

Author: Renee Linklater, Lewis Mehl-Madrona

Description: In Decolonizing Trauma Work, Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the centre, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and wholistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression and experiences of parallel and multiple realities.

Through stories and strategies that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and embedded with cultural knowledge, Linklater offers purposeful and practical methods to help individuals and communities that have experienced trauma. Decolonizing Trauma Work, one of the first books of its kind, is a resource for education and training programs, health care practitioners, healing centres, clinical services and policy initiatives.

Title: Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault in Popular Culture

Author: Laura L. Finley

Description: Using historical and current examples from film, television, literature, advertisements, and music, this book reveals the ways that rape and abuse are typically presented—and misrepresented—and evaluates the impact of these depictions on consumers. Each chapter discusses movies, music, literature, and other forms of popular culture that address issues of domestic abuse and sexual assault, identifying both accurate depictions and problematic examples. The final section of the book addresses how our culture responds to and attempts to prevent domestic abuse and sexual assault, covering depictions of police response to these kinds of crimes in popular culture, how the justice system handles these cases, and individual and community efforts to curb domestic abuse and sexual assault. A compendium of films, documentaries, popular books, and song lyrics featuring domestic abuse and sexual assault enables readers to easily investigate the subject further.

Title: Encyclopedia of Rape and Sexual Violence

Author: Merril D. Smith

Description: This encyclopedia will help readers to develop a deeper understanding of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the United States and around the world. Content illuminates all aspects of this serious issue, including the forms of trauma experienced by survivors/victims; different types of rape, from incest to acquaintance rape to prison rape; specific cases, events, and controversies; laws, policies, movements, and organizations pertaining to the issue; and legal, political, and cultural contributors to rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Title: Even If You’re Broken: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo

Author: Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Description: In these fiery essays, Pryal documents reporting her rape to a university Title IX office, in grim, yet hilarious, detail. She turns her law-trained eye to the Bill Cosby case and to Kesha’s struggle to break free of her recording contract because of alleged abuse by her producer. This book is for survivors, those who love them, and those who want to make the world a better place for them. These stories strip away shame. They burn off fear. They lay bare the injustices women face and how we can fight them. Most of all, Pryal shows how she has fought those injustices herself—and by showing us, she inspires us to do the same.

Title: Every Body Looking

Author: Candice Iloh

Description: Every Body Looking is a heavily autobiographical novel of a young woman’s struggle to carve a place for herself–for her black female body–in a world of deeply conflicting messages. Told entirely in verse, Ada’s story encompasses her earliest memories as a child, including her abuse at the hands of a young cousin, her mother’s rejection and descent into addiction, and her father’s attempts to create a home for his American daughter more like the one he knew in Nigeria.

Title: Every Bone a Prayer

Author: Ashley Blooms

Description: This is the story of one tough-as-nails girl whose choices are few but whose fight is boundless, as her coping becomes a battle cry for everyone around her. Written by a survivor of sexual abuse, Every Bone a Prayer is a beautifully honest exploration of healing and of hope.

Title: Every Last Promise

Author: Kristin Halbrook

Description: Every Last Promise is a provocative and emotional novel about a girl who must decide between keeping quiet and speaking up after witnessing a classmate’s sexual assault.

Title: Excavation: A Memoir

Author: Wendy C. Ortiz

Description: In Excavation, the black and white of the standard victim/perpetrator stereotype gives way to unsettling grays. The present-day narrator reflects on the girl she once was, as well as the teacher and parent she has become. It’s a beautifully written and powerful story of a woman reclaiming her whole heart.

Title: Exit, Pursued A Bear

Author: E.K Johnston

Description: Heartbreaking and empowering, Exit, Pursued by a Bear is the story of transcendent friendship in the face of trauma.

Title: Faking Normal

Author: Courtney C. Stevens

Description: An edgy, realistic debut novel praised by the New York Times bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys, as “a beautiful reminder that amid our broken pieces we can truly find ourselves.”

Title: Fault Line

Author: Christa Desir

Description: In a single night, Ani’s life was torn to shreds–and Ben struggles with the weight of trying to fix the unfixable in this heartbreaking and edgy debut novel. Ben could date anyone he wants, but he only has eyes for the new girl–sarcastic, free-spirited Ani. Luckily for Ben, Ani wants him, too. She’s everything Ben could ever imagine. Everything he could ever want. But that all changes after the party. The one Ben misses. The one Ani goes to alone. Now Ani isn’t the girl she used to be, and Ben can’t sort out the truth from the lies. What really happened, and who is to blame? Ben wants to help Ani, but the more she pushes him away, the more he wonders if there’s anything he can do to save the girl he loves in this powerful, gut-wrenching debut novel.

Title: Fighting Words

Author: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Description: In this powerful novel that explores the stigma around child sexual abuse and leavens an intense tale with compassion and humor, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley tells a story about two sisters, linked by love and trauma, who must find their own voices before they can find their way back to each other. Ages 10-14.

Title: For Now: Words of the Girl Who Fought Back

Author: Anna Nettie Hanson

Description: Anna Nettie Hanson has written a book the vividly describes the pain and trauma of rape by someone she thought was a friend. Her unique daily journal was written during the immediacy following her rape and reflects raw and powerful emotions, shared by many who have endured such attacks. Hanson eloquently breaks up the details of her rape through poetry to be sure she does not overwhelm the reader and to ensure that nothing of that experience is left out. We believe that this work can be helpful to survivors and as a resource for people working with adolescents who sexually abuse and who want to understand the impact of their sexually abusive behavior.

Title: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Author: Matthew Quick

Description: In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more than I was–that I couldn’t stick around–and that what’s going to happen today isn’t their fault. Today is Leonard Peacock’s birthday. It is also the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather’s P-38 pistol. Maybe one day he’ll believe that being different is okay, important even. But not today.

Title: Girl In The Woods

Author: Aspen Mathis

Description: On her second night of college, Aspen Matis was raped by a fellow student. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses, she stumbled through her first semester. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: She would seek healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada

Title: Girl Made of Stars

Author: Ashley Herring Blake

Description: With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim-blaming, and sexual assault.

Title: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Author: Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

Description: Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Title: History of Violence

Author: Edouard Louis

Description: A bestseller in France, History of Violence is a short nonfiction novel in the tradition of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, but with the victim as its subject. Moving seamlessly and hypnotically between past and present, between Louis’s voice and the voice of an imagined narrator, History of Violence has the exactness of a police report and the searching, unflinching curiosity of memoir at its best. It records not only the casual racism and homophobia of French society but also their subtle effects on lovers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. It represents a great step forward for a young writer whose acuity, skill, and depth are unmatched by any novelist of his generation, in French or English.

Title: Homegrown: Home Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists

Author: Joan Smith

Description: What do the attacks in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster have in common with those at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack and multiple US shootings? They were all carried out by men with histories of domestic violence.

Title: I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor’s Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope

Author: Chessy Prout, Jen Abelson

Description: This memoir is more than an account of a horrific event. It takes a magnifying glass to the institutions that turn a blind eye to such behavior and a society that blames victims rather than perpetrators. Chessy’s story offers real, powerful solutions to upend rape culture as we know it today. Prepare to be inspired by this remarkable young woman and her story of survival, advocacy, and hope in the face of unspeakable trauma. In 2014, Chessy Prout was a freshman at St. Paul’s School, a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire, when a senior boy sexually assaulted her as part of a ritualized game of conquest. Chessy bravely reported her assault to the police and testified against her attacker in court.

Then, in the face of unexpected backlash from her once-trusted school community, she shed her anonymity to help other survivors find their voice.

Title: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Author: Maya Angelou

Description: The autobiography of the renowned poet examines the anguish of her early childhood in rural Alabama, to her adolescence in St. Louis, where she is attacked by a man many times her age. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Title: I Never Called It Rape

Author: Robin Warshaw, Gloria Steinem, Salamisah Tillet

Description: The classic book that broke new ground by thoroughly reporting on the widespread problem of date and acquaintance rape has now been completely updated to include recent studies, issues, current events, and controversies.

Title: I Still Believe Anita Hill: Three Generations Discuss The Legacy Of Speaking

Author: Amy Richards, Cynthia Greenberg

Description: In the fall of 1991, Anita Hill captured the country’s attention when she testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee describing sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas, who had been her boss and was about to ascend to the Supreme Court. We know what happened next: she was challenged, disbelieved, and humiliated; he was given a lifelong judicial appointment. What is less well-known is how many women and men were inspired by Anita Hill’s bravery, how her testimony changed the feminist movement, and how she singlehandedly brought public awareness to the issue of sexual harassment. Twenty years later, this collection brings together three generations to witness, respond to, and analyze Hill’s impact, and to present insights in law, politics, and the confluence of race, class, and gender.

Title: I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse

Author: Lori Robinson

Description: In this comprehensive self-help guide, Lori Robinson has created a valuable resource for African American survivors of sexual assault—as well as their families, friends, and communities. Robinson walks readers through the ways survivors can achieve emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual healing, reflecting her firsthand insight into the particular difficulties African Americans face on their journey toward recovery.

Title: Identical

Author: Ellen Hopkins

Description: Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family — on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that’s where their differences begin.

Title: In a Day’s Work: The Fight To End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most vulnerable Workers

Author: Bernice Yeung

Description: Yeung takes readers on a journey across the country, introducing us to women who came to America to escape grinding poverty only to encounter sexual violence in the United States. In a Day’s Work exposes the underbelly of economies filled with employers who take advantage of immigrant women’s need to earn a basic living. When these women find the courage to speak up, Yeung reveals, they are too often met by apathetic bosses and under resourced government agencies. But In a Day’s Work also tells a story of resistance, introducing a group of courageous allies who challenge dangerous and discriminatory workplace conditions alongside aggrieved workers—and win. Moving and inspiring, this book will change our understanding of the lives of immigrant women.

Title: Inexcusable

Author: Chris Lynch

Description: Keir doesn’t understand. He loves Gigi. He would never do anything to hurt her. So Keir carefully recounts the events leading up to that one fateful night, in order to uncover the truth. Clearly, there has been a mistake.

But what has happened is, indeed, something inexcusable.

Title: Is rape a crime? : a memoir, an investigation, and a manifesto

Author: Michelle Bowdler

Description: Award-winning writer and public health executive Michelle Bowdler’s memoir indicts how sexual violence has been addressed for decades in our society, asking whether rape is a crime given that it is the least reported major felony, least successfully prosecuted, and fewer than 3% of reported rapes result in conviction. Cases are closed before they are investigated and DNA evidence sits for years untested and disregarded

Rape in this country is not treated as a crime of brutal violence but as a parlor game of he said / she said. It might be laughable if it didn’t work so much of the time.

Title: Joining Forces Empowering Male Survivors

Author: Dr. Howard Bradkin

Description: Joining Forces: Empowering Male Survivors to Thrive is an inspirational new book written to empower male survivors of sexual victimization to develop skills they can use to overcome the effects of trauma and learn to thrive in their lives. Male survivors often struggle to feel any sense of hope for the future, so this book is designed to inspire survivors and their allies with easily learned skills developed over the course of the author’s 30-year career, and the real-life experiences of male survivors who have learned to thrive.

Each chapter invites survivors to dare to dream that they can take another step in their healing process through leaving their isolation behind, challenging their dysfunctional beliefs and replacing them with healthier functional messages, practicing healing exercises, reading about the struggles and successes of men just like themselves, and learning how to build hope through the use of affirmations.

Title: Just Listen

Author: Sarah Dessen

Description: Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, 16-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

Title: Kite Runner

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Description: The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Title: Know My Name

Author: Chanel Miller

Description: She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time. Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing.

Title: Leaping Upon Mountains

Author: Mike Lew

Description: Presenting the first real investigation of what male sexual assault survivors themselves identify as most important during various stages of recovery, Leaping upon the Mountains contains powerfully moving contributions from hundreds of men of all ages and backgrounds throughout the United States and 45 other countries. It is not a work of fiction, but a compilation of many truths, many realities—a quilt pieced together from men’s experiences—forming an impressively triumphant pattern. Taken together, they state, lucidly and forcefully, that recovery work produces changes that are real, important, and permanent. Leaping upon the Mountains is a celebration of successful recovery.

Title: Left To Tell 

Author: Imacullee llibaigza

Description: Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God.

She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love–a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

Title: Lucky

Author: Alice Sebold

Description: In this bold memoir, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as a college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold’s indomitable spirit—as she struggles for understanding; as her family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as she triumphs, managing to help secure her attacker’s arrest and conviction.

Title: Mean

Author: Myriam Gurba

Description: True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.

Title: Milk & Honey

Author: Rupi Kaur

Description: #1 New York Times bestseller milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.

The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

Title: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

Author: Jon Krakauer

Description: From bestselling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative about a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana—stories that illuminate the human drama behind the national plague of campus rape.

Title: Moxie

Author: Jennifer Mathieu

Description: Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment, and gross comments from guys during class. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv’s mom was a tough-as-nails, punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, and now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

Title: My Dark Vanessa

Author: Kate Elizabeth Russell

Description: Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

Title: No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Author: Rachel Louise Snyder

Description: In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don’t know we’re seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths―that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

Title: Not That Bad

Author: Roxane Gay

Description: In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied” for speaking out. Contributions include essays from established and up-and-coming writers, performers, and critics, including actors Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union and writers Amy Jo Burns, Booker Prize-nominated Brandon Taylor, and Lyz Lenz.

Title: Notes on a Silencing

Author: Lacy Crawford

Description: In this searing book, Crawford tells the story of coming forward during the state investigation of the elite New England prep school decades after her assault, only to find for the first time evidence that corroborated her memories. Here were depictions of the naïve, hardworking girl she’d been, as well as astonishing proof of an institutional silencing. The slander, innuendo, and lack of adult concern that Crawford had experienced as a student hadn’t been imagined; they were the actions of a school that prized its reputation above anything, even a child.

Title: One Hour In Paris

Author: Karyn L. Freedman

Description: In this powerful memoir, philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. One Hour in Paris takes the reader on a harrowing yet inspirational journey through suffering and recovery both personal and global. We follow Freedman from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, then from a trauma center in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. At a time when as many as one in three women in the world have been victims of sexual assault and when many women are still ashamed to come forward, Freedman’s book is a moving and essential look at how survivors cope and persevere.

One Hour in Paris is essential reading for survivors of sexual violence as well as an invaluable resource for therapists, mental health professionals, and family members and friends of victims.

Title: Perfect Match

Author: Jodi Picoult

Description: In the course of her everyday work, career-driven assistant district attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters and works determinedly to ensure that a legal system with too many loopholes keeps these criminals behind bars. But when her own five-year-old son, Nathaniel, is traumatized by a sexual assault, Nina and her husband, Caleb, a quiet and methodical stone mason, are shattered, ripped apart by an enraging sense of helplessness in the face of a futile justice system that Nina knows all too well. In a heartbeat, Nina’s absolute truths and convictions are turned upside down, and she hurtles toward a plan to exact her own justice for her son—no matter the consequence, whatever the sacrifice.

Title: Punch Like A Girl

Author: Karen Crossing

Description: When she attacks a stranger in a store, she ends up doing community service at a shelter for victims of domestic violence. She bonds with a little girl named Casey, but when Casey is abducted while in Tori’s care, Tori is racked with guilt, certain that she should have been able to prevent the abduction. During the search for Casey, Tori comes face to face with an ex-boyfriend who sexually assaulted her at a party. Only when she speaks out about the assault is she able to begin to heal.

Title: Purple Sparks: Poetry by Sexual Assault Survivors

Author: Candice Iloh

Description: Purple Sparks ~ A collection of poems by sexual assault survivors is a riveting collection of human voices that bring awareness, advocacy, and power to the issue of sexual assault.

Title: Push

Author: Sapphire

Description: Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as she learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it truly her own for the first time.

Title: Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices From Within The Antiviolence Movement

Author: Jennifer Paxton

Description: Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement locates them at the center of the anti-violence movement and creates a space for their voices to be heard. Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional violence against women framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered.

This thirty-seven piece collection disrupts the mainstream conversations about sexual violence and connects them to disability justice, sex worker rights, healing justice, racial justice, gender self-determination, queer & trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition through reflections, personal narrative, and strategies for resistance and healing. Where systems, institutions, families, communities and partners have failed them, this collection lifts them up, honors a multitude of lived

Title: Rape and resistance: understanding the complexities of sexual violation

Author: Linda Martín Alcoff

Description: In this powerful and original book, Linda Martín Alcoff aims to correct the misleading language of public debate about rape and sexual violence by showing how complex our experiences of sexual violation can be. Although it is survivors who have galvanized movements like #MeToo, when their words enter the public arena they can be manipulated or interpreted in a way that damages their effectiveness. Rather than assuming that all experiences of sexual violence are universal, we need to be more sensitive to the local and personal contexts – who is speaking and in what circumstances – that affect how activists’ and survivors’ protests will be received and understood.

Alcoff has written a book that will revolutionize the way we think about rape, finally putting the survivor center stage.

Title: Representing Rape

Author: Susan Ehrlich

Description: Representing Rape is the first feminist analysis of the language of sexual assault trials from the perspective of linguists. Susan Ehrlich argues that language is central to all legal settings – specifically sexual harassment and acquaintance rape hearings where linguistic descriptions of the events are often the only type of evidence available. Language does not simply reflect but helps to construct the character of the people and events under investigation. The book is based around a case study of the trial of a male student accused of two instances of sexual assault in two different settings: a university tribunal and a criminal trial.

This case is situated within international studies on rape trials and is relevant to the legal systems of the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. She shows how culturally-dominant notions about rape percolate through the talk of sexual assault cases in a variety of settings and ultimately shape their outcome. Ehrlich hopes that to understand rape trials in this way is to recognize their capacity for change. By highlighting the underlying preconceptions and prejudices in the language of courtrooms today, this important book paves the way towards a fairer judicial system for the future.

Title: Room

Author: Emma Donoghue

Description: Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Title: Salem Falls

Author: Jodi Picoult

Description: A handsome stranger comes to the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls in hopes of burying his past: Once a teacher at a girls’ prep school, Jack St. Bride was destroyed when a student’s crush sparked a powder keg of accusation. Now, washing dishes for Addie Peabody at the Do-Or-Diner, he slips quietly into his new routine, and Addie finds this unassuming man fitting easily inside her heart. But amid the rustic calm of Salem Falls, a quartet of teenage girls harbor dark secrets — and they maliciously target Jack with a shattering allegation. Now, at the center of a modern-day witch hunt, Jack is forced once again to proclaim his innocence: to a town searching for answers, to a justice system where truth becomes a slippery concept written in shades of gray, and to the woman who has come to love him.

Title: Salvation Black People And Love

Author: Bell Hooks

Description: Written from both historical and cultural perspectives, Salvation takes an incisive look at the transformative power of love in the lives of African Americans. Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou, the liberation movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, or hip hop and gangsta rap culture, hooks lets us know what love’s got to do with it.

Title: See What You Made Me Do

Author: Jess Hill

Description: “Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates- in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen – one in six – have been abused by an intimate partner. In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest – and most intimate – ways imaginable. She asks- What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like? What emerges is not only a searing investigation of the violence so many women experience, but a dissection of how that violence can be enabled and reinforced by the judicial system we trust to protect us. Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence.”

Title: Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance: Theory, Research, and Practice

Author: Lindsay M. Orchowski

Description: Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance explores the theory, research, and practice of sexual assault risk reduction, resistance education, and self-defense programs for women and other vulnerable groups, including sexual minorities, individuals with disabilities, and those with histories of victimization. Following an ecosystemic perspective, the book examines individual risk and protective factors for sexual victimization, as well as peer-, family-, community- and societal-level factors that influence risk for sexual violence and inform the content of programs.

Title: Sexual Citizens

Author: Jennifer Hirsch, Shamus Khan

Description: Empathic, insightful, and far-ranging, Sexual Citizens transforms our understanding of sexual assault and offers a roadmap for how to address it.

Title: Sexual Violence on Campus: Power-Conscious Approaches to Awareness, Prevention, and Response

Author: Christina Linder

Description: In this important book, Linder advances a power-conscious lens to challenge student activists, administrators, educators, and policy makers to develop more nuanced approaches to sexual violence awareness, response, and prevention on college campuses.

Title: Shout

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Description: Best known as the author of the award-winning book Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson writes about her own experiences with sexual assault and the conversations she has had with survivors across the country in this poetic memoir and call-to-action for advocates against sexual assault.

Title: Sold

Author: Patricia McCormick

Description: The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award Finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

Title: South Of Forgiveness : A True Story Of Rape And Responsibility

Author: Thordis Elva, Tom Stranger

Description: One ordinary spring morning in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thordis Elva kisses her son and partner goodbye before boarding a plane to do a remarkable thing: fly seven thousand miles to South Africa to confront the man who raped her when she was just sixteen. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Tom Stranger nervously embarks on an equally life-changing journey to meet Thordis, wondering whether he is worthy of this milestone. After exchanging hundreds of searingly honest emails over eight years, Thordis and Tom decided it was time to speak face to face. Coming from opposite sides of the globe, they meet in the middle, in Cape Town, South Africa, a country that is no stranger to violence and the healing power of forgiveness.

South of Forgiveness is an unprecedented collaboration between a survivor and a perpetrator, each equally committed to exploring the darkest moment of their lives. It is a true story about being bent but not broken, facing fear with courage, and finding hope even in the most wounded of places. Personable, accessible, and compelling, South of Forgiveness is an intense and refreshing look at a gendered violence, rape culture, personal responsibility, and the effect that patriarchal cultures have on both men and women.

Title: Speak

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Description: Freshman year at Merryweather High is not going well for Melinda Sordino. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, and now her friends—and even strangers—all hate her. So she stops trying, stops talking. She retreats into her head, and all the lies and hypocrisies of high school become magnified, leaving her with no desire to talk to anyone anyway. But it’s not so comfortable in her head, either—there’s something banging around in there that she doesn’t want to think about. She can’t just go on like this forever. Eventually, she’s going to have to confront the thing she’s avoiding, the thing that happened at the party, the thing that nobody but her knows. She’s going to have to speak the truth.

Title: Speak: The Graphic Novel

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Description: An adaptation of the groundbreaking novel; Melinda is an outcast at Merryweather High. Something happened over the summer – something bad – and now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen. So what’s the point in speaking at all?

Through her work on an art project, Melinda is finally able to face what really happened that night. But before she can make peace with the ghosts of the past, she has to confront the reality of the present – and stop someone who still wishes to do her harm. Only words can save her. She can’t stay silent. Not any more.

Title: Speaking Truth To Power

Author: Anita Hill

Description: Twenty-six years before the #metoo movement, Anita Hill sparked a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace.

After her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings, Anita Hill ceased to be a private citizen and became a public figure at the white-hot center of an intense national debate on how men and women relate to each other in the workplace. That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives–and on Anita Hill’s life. Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event.

Title: Still Room for Hope

Author: Alisa Kaplan

Description: On July 6, 2002, sixteen-year-old Alisa Kaplan woke, sick and disoriented, in the passenger seat of her car. She’d been at a party the night before, but there was a big blank hole where her own memories of the night should have been. So what happened at that party? Why couldn’t she remember anything about the night before? As the appalling, terrifying details of that night began to surface, it ignited a media frenzy and a storm of controversy with Alisa trapped at the center: A straight-laced, straight-A student, sexually assaulted by three male friends-all caught on videotape.

Now she recounts her gripping story of transforming from victim to survivor: How she got a second chance, broke her silence, and found faith and grace in God on her way to rebuilding a stronger, meaningful life.
Courageous and heartbreaking, Alisa’s hope-filled account demonstrates that redemption is always possible, and forgiveness can transform anyone.

Title: Strong At Heart: How It Feels To Heal From Sexual Abuse

Author: Carolyn Lehman

Description: Presents the stories of young victims of sexual abuse who discuss their experiences and describe the ways in which they were able to overcome their past and recover from their trauma.

Title: Such a Pretty Girl

Author: Laura Wiess

Description: A darkly compelling novel about a young woman who must defend herself against her abusive father. “In the character of Meredith, Laura Wiess has created a girl to walk alongside Harper Lee’s Scout and J.D. Salinger’s Phoebe. Read this novel, and you will be changed forever” (New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice). They promised Meredith nine years of safety, but only gave her three.

Her father was supposed to be locked up until Meredith turned eighteen. She thought she had time to grow up, get out, and start a new life. But Meredith is only fifteen, and today her father is coming home from prison.

Today her time has run out.

Title: Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories of Rape 

Author: Charlotte Pierce-Baker

Description: It opens with the author’s harrowing and courageous account of her rape and includes the stories of the author’s own family’s response, plus the voices of Black men who have supported rape survivors.

Title: Swagger

Author: Carl Deuker

Description: When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach. Pitch-perfect basketball plays, well-developed characters, and fine storytelling make this psychological sports novel a slam dunk.

Title: Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

Author: Warsan Shire

Description: What elevates ‘teaching my mother how to give birth’, what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire’s ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times – as in Tayeb Salih’s work – and translating to the realm of lyric the work of the likes of Nawal El Saadawi. As Rumi said, “Love will find its way through all languages on its own”; in ‘teaching my mother how to give birth’, Warsan’s début pamphlet, we witness the unearthing of a poet who finds her way through all preconceptions to strike the heart directly. Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer who is based in London.

Title: The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America

Author: Sarah Deer

Description: The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer, who played a crucial role in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse. Deer provides a clear historical overview of rape and sex trafficking in North America, paying particular attention to the gendered legacy of colonialism in tribal nations—a truth largely overlooked or minimized by Native and non-Native observers. She faces this legacy directly, articulating strategies for Native communities and tribal nations seeking redress. In a damning critique of federal law that has accommodated rape by destroying tribal legal systems, she describes how tribal self-determination efforts of the twenty-first century can be leveraged to eradicate violence against women. Her work bridges the gap between Indian law and feminist thinking by explaining how intersectional approaches are vital to addressing the rape of Native women.

Title: The Bluest Eye

Author: Toni Morrison

Description: Set in the author’s childhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of Black, 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, Pecola’s life changed—in painful, devastating ways. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrisons’s most powerful, unforgettable novels—and a significant work of American fiction.

Title: The Body Keeps The Score

Author: Bessel Van Der Kolk

Description:  In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

Title: The Bones Below

Author: Sierra DeMulder

Description: A clear voice of her generation, Sierra DeMulder’s writing offers a gritty, sincere perspective on the subtle joys and modern pains of living. Her debut collection The Bones Below delicately carries the reader to a place of brutal, beautiful honesty. DeMulder’s personal revelations complete a touching portrait of the young artist and her fearless exploration of the human experience, bare in its rawest and most tender forms.

Title: The Color Purple

Author: Alice Walker

Description: The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

Description: Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Description: Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived with her husband; when she protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.

Title: The Long Journey Home: Understanding And Ministering To The Sexually Abused

Author: Andrew J. Schmut

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Title: The Lovely Bones

Author: Alice Seobold

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Title: The Luckiest Girl Alive

Author: Jessica Knoll

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Title: The Mirror Season

Author: Anna-Marie McLemore

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Title: The Mockingbirds

Author: Daisy Whitney

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Title: The Nowhere Girls

Author: Amy Reed

Description: Three misfit girls come together to avenge the rape of a girl none of them knew, and in the process, start a movement that transforms the lives of everyone around them.

Title: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Author: Stephen Chbosky

Description: This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Title: The Power

Author: Naomi Alderman Memoir

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Title: The Rape Poems

Author: Frances Driscoll

Description:

Title: The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities

Author: Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Description:

Title: The Round House: A Novel

Author: Louise Erdrich

Description: A criminal act unravels everything that was once solid and known in this novel about the search for justice in a small community and within a family.

Title: The Shanghai Girls

Author: Lisa See

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Title: The Shape of A Hundred Hips

Author: Patricia Cumbie

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Title: The Ship We Built

Author: Lexie Bean

Description: Tender and wise, The Ship We Built is about the bravery it takes to stand up for yourself–even to those you love–and the power of finding someone who treasures you for everything you are. Ages 10-14.

Title: The Summer of Owen Todd

Author: Todd Abbott

Description: This harrowing and sensitively told tale of child abuse is a must-read for anyone who might ever be called upon to help a friend in need. Ages 10-14.

Title: The Sun And Her Flowers

Author: Rupi Kaur

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Title: The Tenth Circle

Author: Jodi Piccoult

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Title: The Way I Used to Be

Author: Amber Smith

Description: Told in four parts—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year—this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, and while learning to embrace a power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.

Title: The Word for Yes

Author: Claire Needall

Description:

Title: Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl

Author: Jeannie Vanasco

Description: Exacting and courageous, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions and interrogate our biases. Jeannie Vanasco examines and dismantles long-held myths of victimhood, discovering grace and power in this genre-bending investigation into the trauma of sexual violence.

Title: Thirteen Reasons Why

Author: Jay Asher

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Title: To Kill A Mockingbird

Author: Harper Lee

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Title: UnSlut: A Diary and a Memoir

Author: Emily Lindin

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Title: Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution

Author: Laurie Penny

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Title: Victims No Longer : Men Recovering From Incest And Other Sexual Child Abuse

Author: Mike Lew

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Title: Violated: Exposing Rape At Baylor University Amid College Football’s Sexual Assault Crisis

Author: Paula Lavigne

Description:

Title: We Believe You: Survivors Of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out

Author: Annie E. Clark, Andrea L. Pino

Description: From young activists at the forefront of the movement to end sexual assault on college campuses, a collection of survivor stories that will connect with students and inform and inspire us all.

Title: We Should All Be Feminists

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Description: With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the 21st century—one rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences—in the U.S., in her native Nigeria, and abroad—offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike.

Title: What Happens Next

Author: Colleen Clayton

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Title: What We Saw

Author: Aaron Hartzler

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Title: What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

Author: Sohaila Abdulali

Description: In the tradition of Rebecca Solnit, a beautifully written, deeply intelligent, searingly honest—and ultimately hopeful—examination of sexual assault and the global discourse on rape told through the perspective of a survivor, writer, counselor, and activist.

Title: What you Really Really Want

Author: Jaclyn Friedman

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Title: When You Know What I Know

Author: Sonja Solter

Description: A sensitive, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful novel in verse about one girl’s journey in the aftermath of abuse. Ages. 8-12.

Title: Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest For Truth, Authenticity And The Perfect Knuckleball

Author: R.A. Dickey, Wayne Coffey

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Title: Whipping Girl: A Transexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

Author: Julia Serano

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Title: Whisper Network: A Novel

Author: Chandler Baker

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Title: White Oleander

Author: Janet Fitch

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Title: Written On The Body: Letters From Trans And Non Binary Survivors Of Sexual Assault And Domestic Violence

Author: Lexie Bean, Dean Spade, Nyala Moon

Description: Written by and for trans and non-binary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, Written on the Body offers support, guidance, and hope for those who struggle to find safety at home, in the body, and other unwelcoming places.

Title: Yes All Women

Author: Rebecca Solnit

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Title: Yes Means Yes: Visions Of Female Power And A World Without Rape

Author: Jaclyn Friedman, Jessica Valenti

Description: Yes Means Yes brings to the table a dazzling variety of perspectives and experiences focused on the theory that educating all people to value female sexuality and pleasure leads to viewing women differently, and ending rape. Yes Means Yes has radical and far-reaching effects: from teaching men to treat women as collaborators and not conquests, encouraging men and women that women can enjoy sex instead of being shamed for it, and ultimately, that our children can inherit a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Title: You Against Me

Author: Jenny Downham

Description: