Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped, often repeatedly, by what many thought were ghosts or demons, as a punishment for their sins. As the women tentatively began to share the details of the attacks -- waking up sore and bleeding and not understanding why -- their stories were chalked up to 'wild female imagination'. Women Talking is an imagined response to...

"She was know 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 almost eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law...

"Alice Sebold meets Roxane Gay in Michelle Bowdler's literary debut, telling her story of rape and recovery while interrogating why one of society's most serious crimes goes largely uninvestigated. The crime of rape sizzles like a lightning strike. It pounces, flattens, destroys. A person stands whole, and in a moment of unexpected violence, that life, that body is gone. Award-winning writer and public health executive Michelle Bowdler's memoir indicts...

"The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday -- school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents -- with the surreal -- rivers of...

It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there. She doesn't know why she's in pain. But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened...

When Dr. Alex Taylor opens her eyes, she is hooked up to an IV, is bound to an operating table, and her legs are raised in stirrups. A man in the room claiming to be a doctor calmly and methodically tells her how he's about to attack her. Before Alex can even scream for help, she succumbs to another dose of anesthesia, rendering her unable to defend herself. When she wakes up, she immediately reports the attack and rape. The police are skeptical of...

"Annie Stoddard was the smartest girl in her small public high school in Georgia, but now that she's at Carter, it feels like she's got 'Scholarship Student' written on her forehead. Bea Powers put aside misgivings about attending college in the South as a biracial student intake part in Carter's Justice Scholars program. But even within that rarefied circle of people trying to change the world, it seems everyone has a different idea of what justice...

In Be Strong, Be Wise, psychotherapist and youth advocate Amy Carpenter provides all the information young adults need to lower risk (while still having fun!). Use the tools Amy provides to feel confident in public settings, whether on campus, at a party or a club, on a date or a night on the town. --

"BLACK BOX is Shiori Ito's written account of her 2015 assault by a prominent Japanese reporter, the publication of which led to a societal reckoning around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence, and foregrounded Japan's #MeToo movement"--

In Renaissance Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi endures the subjugation of women that allows her father to take credit for her extraordinary paintings, rape and the ensuing trial, and torture, buoyed by her deceased mother's stories of strong women of the Bible. Rome, 1605: After her mother's death, 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. Artemisia became...