Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors

Ream, founder of the Voices and Faces Project, provides an sympathetic perspective on the personal and political dimensions of rape, compelling the reader to match her unflinching gaze as she tells the stories of individuals who “lived through this.” The prose moves from chillingly eloquent to anecdotal as she devotes a chapter each to survivors of rape and childhood sexual abuse. Ream’s greatest accomplishment is the book’s considerable humanism, giving each survivor a three-dimensional life and personality that transcends the stigma too often attached to rape. Guided by her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault , Ream finds the common threads linking an incredibly diverse group of survivors. The chapters panoramically survey each survivor’s life, remaining brutally honest about the terror of this distressingly common crime. Ream’s prose is approachable, making the book a useful introductory primer for anyone studying sexual violence. The helpful inclusion of statistics at the end, which puts quantitative weight behind these individual stories, enhances the book’s educational value. Each individual story commands attention; assembled as a collection, they positively demand it. Photos. Agent: George Greenfield, CreativeWell Inc. (Apr.)