What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

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Pub Date 27 Nov 2018 | Archive Date 27 Nov 2018

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Description

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is brilliant, frank, empowering, and urgently necessary. Sohaila Abdulali has created a powerful tool for examining rape culture and language on the individual, societal, and global level that everyone can benefit from reading."
Jill Soloway

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

After surviving gang-rape at seventeen in Mumbai, Sohaila Abdulali was indignant about the deafening silence that followed and wrote a fiery piece about the perception of rape—and rape victims—for a women's magazine. Thirty years later, with no notice, her article reappeared and went viral in the wake of the 2012 fatal gang-rape in New Delhi, prompting her to write a New York Times op-ed about healing from rape that was widely circulated. Now, Abdulali has written What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape—a thoughtful, generous, unflinching look at rape and rape culture.

Drawing on her own experience, her work with hundreds of survivors as the head of a rape crisis center in Boston, and three decades of grappling with rape as a feminist intellectual and writer, Abdulali tackles some of our thorniest questions about rape, articulating the confounding way we account for who gets raped and why—and asking how we want to raise the next generation. In interviews with survivors from around the world we hear moving personal accounts of hard-earned strength, humor, and wisdom that collectively tell the larger story of what rape means and how healing can occur. Abdulali also points to the questions we don't talk about: Is rape always a life-definining event? Is one rape worse than another? Is a world without rape possible?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is a book for this #MeToo and #TimesUp age that will stay with readers—men and women alike—for a long, long time.

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is brilliant, frank, empowering, and urgently necessary. Sohaila Abdulali has created a powerful tool for examining rape culture and language on the...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781620974742
PRICE $15.99 (USD)
PAGES 224

Average rating from 51 members


Featured Reviews

This is one of the most enlightening book about rape I have ever read. There needs to be a big and on-going conversation on the topic where we break the taboo of silence and start talking about rape proportionately. The author asks the questions that most of us don’t think to ask, a lot of which are geared at changing our perceptions of what rape is and how we perceive and talk about it. And somehow despite the horror and seriousness of the topic, the author manages to instil a sense of hopefulness about the future. It’s both searing and heartfelt in its honesty and its biggest goal is altering the conversation so that we can finally start making some progress away from the unquestioned, permissiveness of rape culture. Highly recommend.

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It saddens me that I reside in a country where rape is a taboo topic but even worse still is that those who are raped are shamed and blamed by either the authorities or those that they open up to. I was motivated to read this book because I needed to go beyond empathy into action, and in this case be proactive in initiating this much needed discussion both at work and with my friends. Thank you Sohaila for sharing this insightful read with me via NetGalley.

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