What We Talk about When We Talk about Rape - Softcover

Abdulali, Sohaila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620974746 ISBN 13: 9781620974742

Publisher: The New Press, 2019

Synopsis

"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.

About this title

About the Author

Sohaila Abdulali was born in Mumbai and moved to the United States with her family when she was a teenager. Since then, she has lived in both countries. She has a BA from Brandeis University in economics and sociology and an MA from Stanford University in communication. Her undergraduate thesis dealt with the socio-economics of rape in India. She is the author of two novels as well as children's books and short stories. Her writing frequently appears in The Guardian and other newspapers. She lives in New York with her husband and their daughter.

Edition details

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1620974746
• ISBN 13: 9781620974742
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224