The most recommended books on sexual violence

Michelle Bowdler’s piercing question pinpoints the hypocrisy of laws that often favor abusers rather than those they harm. This happens so routinely that survivors speak of two assaults: the abuse itself and the revictimization as they seek justice.

Bowdler was the victim of a serial rapist in Boston whose break-ins and assaults terrorized the city. After Bowdler reported the attack, she was assured that the crime would be investigated. Nothing of the sort happened. Is Rape a Crime? pulls back the curtain on how sexual assault victims are treated by law enforcement and concludes with a powerful demand for change.

Susanne Scholz says readers should consider biblical accounts of sexual violence to be “sacred witness” to the horrific reality of rape in the biblical world and in our own world. She proposes that we wrestle with the Bible’s words, including passages that depict God as a violent aggressor, and that we should read scriptural accounts in solidarity with victims, past and present.

This romance caught me off guard. It was a dark romance about a kidnapped man and a woman. The heroine and her sister's fiancé who she disliked. I have to say this book isn’t for everyone as the sensitive subject matter is written about, such as rape and also a suicide attempt. However, because of Hartmann’s amazing way with words, I can’t stop thinking about this book and the characters. Hartmann’s exquisite writing style took me into the basement where the couple was kept. I felt fear and sadness for them. I felt hope. I felt so many things that left me confused at times, but as I was struggling with emotions, I found myself falling in love with these characters. This book was unlike any I have read before. It is a must-read.

Resurrection After Rape: A Guide to Transforming from Victim to Survivor is a therapeutic book with personal stories, artwork, and transformative writing exercises that can be life-changing for rape survivors.

Atkinson is gentle in his approach, and although the readings and exercises may be triggering and at times extremely difficult, they can also provide comfort and clarity throughout the process of engaging with them. I recommend that this book be worked through with a therapist or someone else trained in sexual violence. 

Tarana Burke is the woman behind the “me too” movement and Unbound is her story.

In 2017 when #MeToo shattered the myth that sexual violence is rare, Burke had already been building the movement for over a decade. Unbound traces her growth as a community organizer and the founder of a survivor movement rooted in empathy.

Although one goal of the book is to correct the record of the “me too” origin story, Burke is more interested in a larger notion of justice. She writes movingly of the pervasiveness and damage of sexual violence, including in her own life, and the promise of healing contained in the words “me too.”

For decades, Laurie Halse Anderson’s work has been a guiding light for so many young people in her honest portrayals of life’s hardest challenges, including sexual assault. Her 2019 book Shout, a memoir written in verse, is a deeply personal reflection on her own experience with sexual assault and its impact on her life. She first tackled this topic twenty years earlier in her groundbreaking 1999 novel, Speak—a book that profoundly affected me as a young person. Born out of outrage over the lack of change that has happened in regard to how society treats survivors (and perpetrators) of sexual violence in the twenty years since Speak was published, Shout is a beautifully fierce and moving call to action for today.

In trauma studies, Judith Herman is the GOAT. Truth and Repair follows up Herman’s landmark book Trauma and Recovery and cements her contribution to the study of sexual violence, healing, and justice.

Although The Body Keeps the Score became a surprise pandemic bestseller, it is Truth and Repair that updates trauma theory and clinical practice for the #MeToo era. Herman argues that justice is part of the healing process for individuals and communities.

Her feminist perspective on the real-world factors that enable sexual abuse is clear eyed and her prescription for how to connect healing and justice is ultimately hopeful.

This book is one of several by Bourke that are useful for the comparative study of violence, though they are often chilling to read. Bourke has an impressive range as a historian, as well as the tremendous backbone needed to do research on extremely difficult topics.

Where does one begin to write about forced child marriage and childhood sexual abuse?

In her own words, Nujood writes, “I’m a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no.”

Nujood Ali was sold by her family to a man who married her and continuously raped her before she even hit puberty. It is truly disturbing to read about the hell that Nujood endured, yet it is also astonishing and inspirational to see that she escaped and became Yemen’s first child bride to win a divorce. Nujood continues to be an international activist for Yemen and young girls all over the world, spreading light over evil. 

Karyn Freedman has written a superb but difficult book. It is a close look at her own rape by a stranger while she was in Paris, traveling as a college student. 

The book is a memoir using the lens of this one event. The book is also a scholarly look at rape and its societal causes. It succeeds at both points of view. She documents her ongoing recovery and the power of psychotherapy.

It was illuminating for me to see how this process worked. She writes that rape is often seen as a personal problem but declares that rape is a social issue with deeply set causes.

She makes persuasive arguments backed up by a study she did on rape in Africa. Despite its difficult and intimate subject matter, she was able to remain unflinching in her focus, and her book is powerful because of it.