Violence Memoir

On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love - Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent many years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other - and a young man on a dangerous psychological descent: Isaiah Kalebu, age 23, the son of a distant, authoritarian father and a mother with a family history of mental illness. All three paths forever altered by a violent crime, all three stories a wake-up call to the system that failed to see the signs.

Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11.

Mataio (Matt) Faafetai Malietoa Brown offers the men in his barbershop a haircut with a difference: a safe space to be seen and heard without judgement. As the creator of My Fathers Barbers, Matt has inspired a new generation of New Zealand men to break free from the cycle of abuse - and those men have in turn inspired Matt and his wife, Sarah, to create the global anti-violence movement She Is Not Your Rehab.

Growing up in rural Oregon, Brandon Wolf grappled with the devastating loss of his supportive mother and with the embedded racism and homophobia of a community that made him feel like an unwelcome stranger. After the lack of connection and role models led him down a spiral of risky behavior, Wolf escaped to survive. In Orlando, he found what he’d been searching for: belonging—in a community that was a safe space with people he’d come to call his chosen family.

In 2015, an aspiring young journalist named Shiori Ito charged prominent reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi with rape. After meeting up for drinks and networking, Ito remembers regaining consciousness in a hotel room while being assaulted. But when she went to the police, Ito was told that her case was a “black box”—untouchable and unprosecutable. Upon publication in 2017, Ito’s searing account foregrounded the #MeToo movement in Japan and became the center of an urgent cultural and legal shift around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence.

On a warm spring evening in 1982, 37-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side jammed, she went to the passenger’s side. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement. It was a professional hit, meticulously planned - but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS TV studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime.

In this deeply moving and lyrical memoir, Hoppe shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm. For fans of The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, and Heavy by Kiese Laymon. During the first year of quarantine, drug overdoses spiked, the highest ever recorded. And Hoppe’s cousin was one of them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” Hoppe writes. “People just disappeared.” At the time of her cousin’s death, she’d been in recovery for nearly four years, but she hadn’t told anyone.

An eyewitness account to an event that changed history Nerdy innocent Patty is desperate to escape the confines of a conservative upbringing, but when she enrolls at Kent State University can she survive the upheaval of the Seventies Vietnam War era? When she narrowly escapes the bullets fired at students on May 4, 1970, she resolves to dedicate her life to her new husband and her unborn child. Is it too late when she realizes she’s put herself in even greater danger? In a stunning parallel to our own times, Surviving: A Kent State Memoir, explores the coming of age of a young adult. In ...

Blood, bruises, broken promises and calls to 911 overshadowed my life... This was my nightmare, one in which I thought I would never awaken. Devin overpowered my senses and my control. I relied on my survival instincts to not only protect myself but our vulnerable son. Fighting Devin and his addiction felt like a tightrope, in which I had to balance carefully or I would never make it to the other side. This is how I persevered...

In April 2002, Janine Latus' youngest sister, Amy, wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer. "Today Ron Ball and I are romantically involved", it read, "but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways. Based on his criminal past, writing this out just seems like the smart thing to do. If I am missing or dead this obviously has not protected me...."

March 31, 1985. Two white patrol officers in search of a gang member followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men up a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighborhood of San Diego. Minutes later, gunshots rang out, and the truck's driver, Sagon Penn, fled the scene in an officer's patrol car. Penn was an idealist who believed in the power of Buddhist chants to bring about the oneness of humanity. The two police officers were rising stars in one of the most progressive police departments in the country, yet one that had suffered more officers killed in the line of duty than any other.

Javier Valdez ofrece un libro impactante que va del reportaje a la crónica para rescatar del silencio, de la nota roja y del olvido, a numerosas mujeres que viven entre las balas momentos cruciales de su vida. Amantes de capos, amigas de ellos o familiares, son mujeres con una verdad ardiente y dolorosa, que buscan el glamour y la hermosura, el poder económico y la huida de su realidad; mujeres que viven en el límite de la ley, la violencia y de la muerte.

As an expert and speaker on mass shootings and gun violence, Dr. Lynn Fenton knew it was impossible to “spot a killer”. But when she met her new patient, troubled grad student James Holmes, the hair on her arms stood up. She feared he was going to kill. Yet she could find no way to thwart him. A few months later, Holmes struck: He entered a packed movie theater and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 70; some were left brain damaged, several were paralyzed for life. Immediately the familiar debates reignited: the crisis of mental health access.

As little girls, we dream of one day becoming a ballerina, a doctor; or a lawyer. We dream of having it all - a wonderful husband, beautiful children, a dog, the perfect house with a picket white fence. You know, the classic fairy-tale that most little girls fantasize about with their friends. This might not be your story, but is definitely mine. Maybe you can relate to some things or none at all. The end result of this story is an unhealthy, unhappy relationship that mutates into abuse.

"Violet Lemon" is a heart-wrenching, life-affirming journey through five decades of pain, survival, and ultimately—peace. It begins in December 1970, when young Violet and her brother are torn from their home and the loving father they once knew. Thrust into a world of instability, abuse, and betrayal, Violet’s childhood becomes a battlefield. Raised by a toxic mother and an abusive stepfather, she grows up surrounded by domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, and poverty. Told in powerful vignettes, this raw and poetic novel follows Violet over 50 years as she grapples with PTSD,...

In this candid memoir, Amanda Brown chronicles the unimaginable sexual abuse she suffered from the age of eight at the hands of her stepfather, Davy Tweed. No Peace Until He’s Dead offers a raw and unflinching account of Amanda’s childhood years marred both by the domestic abuse suffered by her mother at the hands of Tweed, and her own appalling trauma leading to her courageous pursuit of justice and recovery. Davy Tweed, a DUP councillor, Orangeman and lauded rugby player for both Ulster and Ireland, maintained the veneer of upstanding citizen through his political and sporting life, ...

Human trafficking, particularly in the context of sex trafficking, represents a grotesque violation of human rights that transcends borders and societal norms. It involves the recruitment, transportation, and exploitation of individuals through coercion, deception, or abuse of power. Victims are often lured with false promises of employment, education, or a better life, only to find themselves trapped in a cycle of abuse and degradation.

What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.

American Oz is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous story of life in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You'll never see your state fair or street festival the same way again. Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working behind the scenes with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals. He shares stories of freaks, a carnival pimp, a tramp gold miner, and the last king of the sideshows.

Do you ever feel controlled by your life? Is it hard for you to release anger from the past? Are you just surviving and calling it living? Face your fears and their message! Each experience is perfectly aligned for your purpose, peace, and freedom. Listen and trust. Your life lessons will guide you. * * * In her memoir, Lynn Balter shows how she transformed unimaginable traumas into a triumphant life of compassion, purpose, and philanthropy. Her life story illustrates the important lessons she learned while surviving and thriving after childhood trauma, sexual assault, divorce, addiction, ...