On books regarding sexual assault

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I've been wondering what I could do to help promote healthy sexual relationships and helping survivors and I think that literature is a great way to spread awareness and to bring more empathy. With this in mind, I'm going to highlight some books dealing with this topic. This post is based off of the Goodreads list Breaking the Silence: Talking about Violence Against Women.

TOP BOOK

• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson - "Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. 
  In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.

This is a book that I've actually never read, but that I was surprised to see a HUGE amount of my Goodreads friends have. Apparently I'm the last person to hear about this book - it was highly rated by everyone I know who's read it and it was near the top of every sexual assault Goodreads list I looked through. If you're looking to understand more about rape or sexual assault, this is the perfect place to start - especially if you want to know how school can play a part in perpetuating or stopping sexual violence.

BOOKS I'VE READ

I've read 7 of the top 100 books on this list and I was kind of surprised that I'd read so few. I read a lot and I try to read a lot about women's issues and social work issues. Sexual violence fits into both categories - so why have I read so little from this list? I have two theories about this: 1) The books on this list are mostly fictional and I may have read more non-fiction on this subject and 2) Most of the books on this list are books that are widely known and regarded, so it may just be that I haven't gotten around to them OR that I've read less known books on the same topic. I'd be really interested in how this list would change if it had more attention - 188 have added books or voted on books on this list, but only 22 people voted for the top book. 

Anyway - I'll be talking about the top 3 books that I've read here today and looking at how much each book can help us understand how to help survivors and to spread accurate messages regarding sexual violence.

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (#10) - Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

It's been years since I read this book - probably 8 or 9 years at least. So it's a little difficult for me to remember all the details. However, this book very clearly deals with non-consensual sex and is upfront about how harmful this can be to survivors. It also makes interesting comparisons between healthy and unhealthy sexual relationships. A reread of this would probably benefit me greatly.

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett (#11) - Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
  Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
  Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
  Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
  Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
  In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women — mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends — view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

This book captivated me from the beginning and I read it in two days. I couldn't put it down. The story of poor Minny is especially encouraging - Minny is outwardly a loudspoken and sassy woman, but she's being beaten by her husband at home. While the violence described all sounds like domestic violence, there could be sexual assault that Minny doesn't reveal and this book serves as an important reminder that it often isn't clear outwardly if someone you know is suffering.

• Room by Emma Donoghue (#12) - To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....
  Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience - and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.
  To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. 
  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.

This book centers around the repeated rape of Jack's mother and the consequences of her imprisonment. While so much of the story is told through Jack's perspective, it's still obvious to adult readers what is happening and how much his mother has suffered. It becomes more clear as they begin to navigate the world outside Room and start seeing what it takes to begin making life normal again. 

What books from this Goodreads list have you read? What other books would you recommend to gain more understanding about sexual assault and violence? What are you doing to spread awareness during SAAM this year?

On women and mental illness

This post was taken from the Goodreads List “Women and Mental Illness."


I love books about feminism. I’m also really interested in books about mental illness. So this list caught my eye. I was kind of pleased with myself (though I still have some work to do…) because I’ve read 13 out the top 100 books - one of the higher percentages I’ve had on any Goodreads list. Still, this list gave me a lot more to read. Below are five of the books I’ve read from this list.

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (#1) - (Synopsis taken from Goodreads) Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
  Oh, Sylvia Plath. I read this book at an age that it made an impression on me - specifically regarding casual sex, virginity, and suicide. This book was fascinating and dark and a really interesting and unique read. I highly recommend this and I can see why it tops this list.

• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison (#6) -The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments.
  I read this book fairly recently for a class on human development and social issues. This was a really interesting read - especially to see how bipolar treatment has changed throughout the years. 

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (#13)-  Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king to ensure his ambitions come true. But he soon learns the meaning of terror - killing once, he must kill again and again, and the dead return to haunt him. A story of war, witchcraft and bloodshed, Macbeth also depicts the relationship between husbands and wives, and the risks they are prepared to take to achieve their desires.
  I was initially surprised to see this so far up this list. But on reflection, Lady Macbeth is a (murderous) feminist, so she belongs here. I may need to reread to fully understand the mental health aspects of Macbeth.

• Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks (#17) - A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24thAfter you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs.... It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life.Read her diary.Enter her world.You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl's harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful -- and as timely -- today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.
  I read this book multiple times as a teen, partly at my mum’s suggestion (maybe she was trying to steer me away from drugs?). It’s an interesting and unique read. I don’t know that I’d want to read this again now.

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare (#19) -One of the greatest plays of all time, the compelling tragedy of the tormented young prince of Denmark continues to capture the imaginations of modern audiences worldwide. Confronted with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, and with his mother’s infidelity, Hamlet must find a means of reconciling his longing for oblivion with his duty as avenger. The ghost, Hamlet’s feigned madness, Ophelia’s death and burial, the play within a play, the “closet scene” in which Hamlet accuses his mother of complicity in murder, and breathtaking swordplay are just some of the elements that make Hamlet an enduring masterpiece of the theater.
  
  Again, I’m surprised to see Shakespeare on here. And then I think of Ophelia and her problems and her eventual suicide and it makes so much sense. A great addition to this list.

What books on this list have you read? What books on this list are you interested in? What are your thoughts on this list? What Goodreads lists have you loved?

On author of color

This post is taken from the Goodreads List “Best Fiction and Memoirs by Authors of Color."

I have to be honest that my knowledge of authors of color is limited. I have so many books on my to-read list that fall under this category, but I haven’t been as dedicated to tracking them down as I should be. When I was looking through this Goodreads list, I was a little ashamed to realize that I’ve only read 5 of the top 100 books and 3 are on my to-read list. Obviously I have a lot of catching up to do. In looking at this list, I’m realizing that I’ve heard of so many of these books - so how have I never gotten around to reading them? It’s about time I started.

Below is some information about the top book on this list and the books on it that I have read.

TOP BOOK

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
  
  Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of women of color in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence.

FROM MY BOOKSHELF

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (#7)
• 'On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.'
  
  Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.
• I have always loved this book. But I had no idea (until looking at this list and doing a little more research) that Alexandre Dumas is an author of color. In fact, his father was a slave in Haiti and moved to France once he was freed. It’s a fascinating bit of knowledge that makes this book a little more interesting.

• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (#9)
• In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spoke Indian Reservation. These 22 interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. There is Victor, who as a nine-year-old crawled between his unconscious parents hoping that the alcohol seeping through their skins might help him sleep. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who tells his stories long after people stop listening, and Jimmy Many Horses, dying of cancer, who writes letters on stationary that reads "From the Death Bed of James Many Horses III," even though he actually writes them on his kitchen table. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and most poetically, between modern Indians and the traditions of the past.
• This is a fun book with some really interesting stories. Honestly, I don’t remember many of them anymore, though. I’ve heard that Sherman Alexie has done more fantastic work, so this could be a good opportunity for me to delve deeper.

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (#35)
• The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.
  
  The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea.
• THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD. This is one of those books that really stays with you and makes its mark. Perhaps I’m due for a reread.

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (#36)
• Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant and constant companion, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Their uncommon bond is torn by Amir's choice to abandon his friend amidst the increasing ethnic, religious, and political tensions of the dying years of the Afghan monarchy, wrenching them far apart. But so strong is the bond between the two boys that Amir journeys back to a distant world, to try to right past wrongs against the only true friend he ever had.
  
  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.
  
  A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.
• I was probably too young to read this book when I did. I remember very little about it (except for a rape scene that disturbed me greatly) and didn’t fully understand anything that was going on in this book. Perhaps I would better appreciate it now.

• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (#48)
• In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish-and the tragic way in which it has come true.
  
  The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember…
• This was another book that I may have been a little young to read and understand (I was in middle school). However, I enjoyed immensely what I could understand and this gave me a lot to consider in a very undiverse community and school.

What books have you read from this Goodreads list? What books aren’t on it that you would add? Which books on this Goodreads list seem the most important in your mind? What other Goodreads lists would you be interested in being blogged about?

On eating disorders

This post was inspired by the Goodread’s list “Best Eating Disorder Books” and is mainly based off of that list.

When I was young, I didn’t know much at all about eating disorders. But by the time I got to college, I knew a handful of people who struggled with them and who I desperately wanted to help and understand. Because of this, I started trying to find books that are frequently recommended to those struggling with eating disorders or books about eating disorders. My search couldn’t progress as much as I wanted - I was still in school and I felt self-conscious about pursuing this information like I was. I didn’t know a better way to approach it with the people I knew who struggled with it and I wasn’t sure what they’d think about my research. I read countless articles, a handful of books, and also talked with people I knew about how best to deal with it. My research wasn’t perfect, but it did lead me to understand a bit more and I was glad to have more knowledge and understanding.

Today’s post is mostly based off of Goodread’s “Best Eating Disorder Books” list, what I think of it, what books I’ve read from it, and how you can use it in your life. Descriptions are taken from Goodreads. Further comments are my own.

TOP BOOK

• Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson -
• "Dead girl walking”, the boys say in the halls.
  "Tell us your secret”, the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
  I am that girl.
  I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
  I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.
  
  Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.
  
  Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia, and her painful path toward recovery.
• Personally, I don’t know that I’d love this book. It seems a little cut-and-dry YA (which I don’t love). Many people noted in their reviews that this book is triggering, but also a very realistic look at ED. I’d probably give it a try, but I can’t see myself loving or recommending this book a bunch.

BOOKS I’VE READ

• Just Listen by Sarah Dessen -
• Last year, Annabel was "the girl who has everything" — at least that's the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf's Department Store.
  
  This year, she's the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong.
  
  Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling. With Owen's help, maybe Annabel can face what happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends.
• This ranks 4th on the list. I read this book in middle school and only rated it two stars. I vaguely remember that I went through a pretty intense Sarah Dessen phase for a while, but got quite sick of her books by the end of it and started disliking them.

• Perfect by Natasha Friend -
• Depicting with humor and insight the pressure to be outwardly perfect, this novel for ages 10-13 shows how one girl develops compassion for her own and others’ imperfections.
  
  For 13-year-old Isabelle Lee, whose father has recently died, everything's normal on the outside. Isabelle describes the scene at school with bemused accuracy--the self-important (but really not bad) English teacher, the boy that is constantly fixated on Ashley Barnum, the prettiest girl in class, and the dynamics of the lunchroom, where tables are turf in a all-eyes-open awareness of everybody's relative social position.
  
  But everything is not normal, really. Since the death of her father, Isabelle's family has only functioned on the surface. Her mother, who used to take care of herself, now wears only lumpy, ill-fitting clothes, cries all night, and has taken every picture of her dead husband and put them under her bed. Isabelle tries to make light of this, but the underlying tension is expressed in overeating and then binging. As the novel opens, Isabelle's little sister, April, has told their mother about Isabelle's problem. Isabelle is enrolled in group therapy. Who should show up there, too, but Ashley Barnum, the prettiest, most together girl in class.
• This was another book that I read at the end of middle school and it just didn’t click for me. I had read several books by this author and none of them really worked for me. I appreciated that they were about real girls with real problems, but it wasn’t what I was in the mood for or what I wanted to read at that time. I’d be interested in seeing what my opinion would be now.

• The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood -
• Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancee and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn't count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage a la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can't stomach ... The Edible Woman is a funny, engaging novel about emotional cannibalism, men and women, and the desire to be consumed.
• THIS BOOK ROCKED MY WORLD. I picked it up (kind of on accident) during the time that I was seriously researching ED and connected so much with Marian and her struggles. While the actual eating part didn’t resonate with me personally, the parts about being a young woman going through an identity crisis really got to me and this is one of my all-time favorite books.

• Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin -
• "Why does every one of my friends have an eating disorder, or, at the very least, a screwed-up approach to food and fitness?" writes journalist Courtney E. Martin. The new world culture of eating disorders and food and body issues affects virtually all -- not just a rare few -- of today's young women. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues -- a generation told that they could "be anything," who instead heard that they had to "be everything." Driven by a relentless quest for perfection, they are on the verge of a breakdown, exhausted from overexercising, binging, purging, and depriving themselves to attain an unhealthy ideal.An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics:
  
  Ten million Americans suffer from eating disorders. Seventy million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders. More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would pre fer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat. More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disease.
  
  In "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters," Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her expose reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple -- and often dangerous -- new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness."
  
  With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed.
• This book was read during my intense ED research phase and it didn’t stand out much in my mind. I rated it three stars. While this was an interesting start to learning about and looking at ED, I didn’t feel like it offered any solutions, tips, assistance, or hope. This non-fiction book read more like an expose on the issue rather than a guide or part of assistance. It was helpful in my initial learning, but I strongly desired to know more and this did not satisfy that at all.

What books from this list have you read? Which ones would you recommend? Which ones aren’t worth the time? How have you educated yourself about eating disorders?