What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape By Sohaila Abdulali

Profile:

"“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 wriet 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?"

Title:  What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape               

Author:  Sohaila Abdulali

Publisher:  The New Press

Reviewed By:  Arlena Dean

Rating:  Five

Review:

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape" by Sohaila Abdulali

My Thoughts...

This was definitely one incredible read where one will get a wide range of topics under this subject: RAPE.  This well written novel will cover this subject from a 'political opinion, factual evidence and personal narratives' that is a easy read even though its a heavy topic with some horrible stories.  I definitely found this information definitely eye opening as well as terrifying in what went on.  Again, I will say this was quite a read where Sohaila Abdulali will draw one into her own 'experience that she had with rape and its aftermath.'  This subject will not be a easy novel to read but in the end one will get a full understanding of what these survivors went through and yet it 'sends a message of empowerment for women.'

Thank you to both NetGalley and The New Press for my ARC of this book.