April is Sexual Assault Awareness month, and we're highlighting books from our collection that speak to sexual assault, gender-based violence, and trauma, resilience, and recovery.
Becoming Unbecoming by
This extraordinary graphic novel is a powerful denunciation of sexual violence against women. As seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl named Una, it takes place in northern England in 1977, as the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer of prostitutes, is on the loose and creating panic among the townspeople. As the police struggle in their clumsy attempts to find the killer, and the headlines in the local paper become more urgent, a once self-confident Una teaches herself to "lower her gaze" in order to deflect attention from boys. After she is "slut-shamed" at school for having birth control pills, Una herself is the subject of violent acts for which she comes to blame herself. But as the police finally catch up with and identify the killer, Una grapples with the patterns of behaviour that led her to believe she was to blame. Becoming Unbecoming combines various styles, press clippings, photo-based illustrations, and splashes of colour to convey young Una's sense of confusion and rage, as well as sobering statistics on sexual violence against women. The book is a no-holds-barred indictment of sexual violence against women and the shame and blame of its victims that also celebrates the empowerment of those able to gain control over their selves and their bodies.
Beloved by
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding New York Times bestseller transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
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Blood and Guts in High School by
A masterpiece of surrealist fiction, steeped in controversy upon its first publication in 1984,Blood and Guts in High School is the book that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism. With 2017 marking the 70th anniversary of her birth, as well as the 10th year since her death this transgressive work of philosophical, political, and sexual insight--with a new introduction by Chris Kraus--continues to become more relevant than ever before.
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College Girl by
The inspirational memoir of a woman who survived a brutal sexual assault and went on to become a university professor.
The God of Small Things by
"A banquet for all the senses," said "Newsweek" of this bestselling and Booker Prize-winning literary novel--a richly textured first book about the tragic decline of one family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love.
Her Body and Other Parties by
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction "[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."--Roxane Gay "In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."--Karen Russell In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode ofLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious,Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by
In Baxter's Beach, Barbados, Lala's grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister. It's a cautionary tale, about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers and go into the Baxter's Tunnels. When she's grown, Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences. A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven into the Tunnels by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom - and their lives.
I Am a Red Dress by
In I Am a Red Dress, acclaimed writer and performer Anna Camilleri confronts the ghosts of her past as she seeks to find her rightful place in the world. Part memoir, part storytelling, Anna writes with passion and conviction about family and identity, and how the wounds of personal history can be healed through the imagination. These eloquent stories and narratives speak to the heart of three generations of women--Anna, her mother, and her grandmother--as they dealt with a cycle of family abuse; in them, the red dress appears as a symbol of defiance and empowerment.
King Kong Theory by
With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes--in her own words "more King Kong than Kate Moss"--delivers a highly charged account of women's lives today. She explodes common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she creates a new space for all those who can't or won't obey the rules.
Women Without Men by
A modern literary masterpiece, Women Without Men creates an evocative and powerfully drawn allegory of life in contemporary Iran. Internationally acclaimed writer Shahrnush Parsipur follows the interwoven destinies of five women including a prostitute, a wealthy middle-aged housewife and a schoolteacher as they arrive by different paths to live together in a garden in Tehran. Shortly after the 1989 publication of Women Without Men in her native Iran, Parsipur was arrested and jailed for her frank and defiant portrayal of women's sexuality.
Yes Means Yes! by
This groundbreaking feminist classic dismantles the way we view rape in our culture and replaces it with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure. In the original edition, feminist, political, and activist writers alike presented their ideas for a paradigm shift from the "No Means No" model--and the result was the groundbreaking shift to today's affirmative consent model ("Yes Means Yes," as coined by this book). With a timely new introduction, refreshed cover, and the timeless contributions of authors from Kate Harding to Jill Filipovic, 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.
