Awareness is prevention.
If you are looking for ways to help reduce violence and support the healing of those affected, please consider reading and then recommending some of the following books on the topics of domestic and sexual violence, stalking, human trafficking, oppression, healing, advocacy, and healthy relationships. Find books for children and teens below.
If you are local and are looking for a book or would like to make a book donation, please contact us at community@startingpointnh.org.
Recommendations & Summaries
This list is periodically updated, and we hold book discussions throughout the year, so please check back often.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
By Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
“Half the Sky” tackles atrocities and indignities from sex trafficking to maternal mortality, from obstetric fistulas to acid attacks, and absorbing the fusillade of horrors can feel like an assault of its own. But the poignant portraits of survivors humanize the issues, divulging facts that moral outrage might otherwise eclipse. The narratives respect nuance, revealing both the range of barriers and the possibility for solutions.
Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors
By Anne Ream
This is not a book that can or should be read in one sitting. It is devastatingly heavy in its bulk of tragedy and the oppression imposed on those who have experienced sexual violence.
It is, however, a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities and the wide range of effects sexual violence has on victims and their loved ones.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
By John Krakauer
Missoula, Montana, is a typical town, home to a highly regarded state university whose beloved football team inspires a passionately loyal fan base. Between January 2008 and May 2012, hundreds of students reported sexual assaults to the local police. Few of the cases were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this, Missoula is also typical.
I Will Find You
By Joanna Connors
A reporter investigates the life of the man who raped her.
This is a hard-to-read book that is impossible to put down as the author unflinchingly attempts to understand the circumstances behind the most brutal and humiliating moments in her life.
Connors provides a rare and unique look at rape.
Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
By Lundy Bancroft
A groundbreaking book written by a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men. He speaks directly to those who have been abused, offering ways to survive or leave an abusive relationship. Lundy covers early signs, abusive personality types, the role of drugs and alcohol, what can be fixed and what can’t, and how to get out safely.
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terrorism
By Judith Herman
This book is part of the welcome package for new staff at Starting Point. Trauma and Recovery helps to highlight and create an understanding of a set of problems that have in the past, been viewed as individual concerns. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context.
The Body Keeps the Score
By Bessell Van De Kolk
A staple for advocates, helping them better understand the effect that psychological trauma can have on individuals and how trauma can impact the way people perceive themselves and the world around them.
This book covers the intricacies of how trauma produces these effects by considering the neuroscience involved. The book can be, at times, technical but offers not just an explanation of why but also how neuroscience allows us to produce new, effective treatments for trauma survivors. Examples of these approaches include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, yoga, and limbic system therapy.
The book is a guide through modern therapies practiced throughout Van der Kolk’s career and the patients he has seen. So this book also serves as a history of the mental health field of the last 30 years.
Video summary of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSCXyYuT2rE
The Four Agreements
By Don Miguel Ruiz
Some time ago, the Starting Point staff adopted the edict of the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz as an ideal for advocating and as a self-care guide.
Not making assumptions or taking things personally are helpful reminders to be true to our word and to do our best.
Shedding ‘agreements’ that society/culture or our families thrust upon us is one way of freeing up our egos and allowing us to see ourselves as ever-evolving.
The edicts of the Four Agreements can help us all see that who we are does not have to be decided by others.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advise for Difficult Times
By Pema Chodron
One of the more challenging aspects of being an advocate (or friend) is realizing that you cannot just “fix things”. An advocate’s heart wants to repair, but an advocate’s job is to empower, to provide the support and the resources a victim needs in order to be safe and to heal. This often means just being present when a client needs to fall apart
Sitting safely in the pain can be the best way of moving away from the paralyzing feelings that can hold us back. Right-sizing fear and anxiety and recognizing the tremendous strength it takes to stay and then leave is empowering.
Pema Chodron shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
By Sonya Renee Taylor
A mantra for activism that starts with self-love. “To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves…”
If, as individuals, we led our lives with self-love and acceptance, we would be better stewards for eliminating the oppression of others. When one is not defined by their body and more defined by their spirit, capability, and vision, then avenues previously shut or, at best, bogged down by cultural misconceptions are open to all and become byways of opportunity and unity.
“The Body is Not an Apology” reflects on these possibilities and calls for greater discussion about creating them.
TED Talk by Sonya Renee Taylor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWI9AZkuPVg
Know My Name: A Memoir
By Chanel Miller
Chanel Miller takes control of her story after a lengthy period of being known only as Emily Doe after Brock Turner raped her behind a dumpster while she was unconscious.
An outstanding book for learning more about the court process and the emotional turmoil of being a victim of sexual assault.
interview with Chanel Miller: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=PTvHn2_0evo
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others
By Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
A guiding publication for advocates everywhere.
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky shares her insight on providing for others while preserving and refilling one’s own tank. She uses humor and poignant examples to illustrate when things have gone awry and professional and personal insight to outline how to step away from the cliff!
Ted Talk by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOzDGrcvmus&t=371s
Books for Children & Teens
We Contain Multitudes
By Sarah Henstra
A love letter in proper epistolary form. Written for lovers of poetry and romance. It contains multitudes in expressions of love, including self-love, first love, love of family, love of friends, and a love of words. It explores the depths of grief, the consequence of great love. Most of all, Henstra offers a loving platform for LGBTQ+ youth to read of protagonists who look and sound and love like them without making the story a curriculum for love is love but instead a lesson in love being complicated in any form and worthy of our efforts. Although categorized as a CYA (Children and Young Adults), it leans more toward young adults in content. Adults will enjoy the form and poetry and the remembrance and joy of young love.
Listening to My Body
By Gabi Garcia
An activity book that helps children connect emotion and sensation and helps them to understand how their body works. Through practice activities in the book children can develop greater control of their emotions by developing ways to regulate as well as strategies for self-soothing. Teaching children to be in tune with their bodies and how to regulate their feelings, combined with awareness of appropriate touch can help reduce sexual abuse between children.
The Brain is Kind of a Big Deal
by Nick Seluk
The Brain is Kind of a Big Deal by New York Times bestseller Nick Seluk is a hilarious and informative book for kids about the amazing computer that lives inside our heads. Teaching kids early on about their brains will help create strategies for them later in life that will add to their resilience toolbox.