A Syllabus for Ending Sexual Assault: A Sexual Assault Awareness Conversation with SAFE Homes

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Hub City is honored to partner with SAFE Homes - Rape Crisis Coalition for an evening highlighting books that discuss and combat this community health issue. This event will feature a discussion about several featured resources, including Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan's Sexual Citizens: Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, Bernice Yeung's In A Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America's Most Vulnerable Workers, and Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, a collection edited by Lexie Bean. Attendees will also have the opportunity to browse and buy resources for themselves, and to hear about and support the mission of SAFE Homes. 

This event is free and open to all, please join us at the Bookshop at 6pm on Thursday, April 28th!

About Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month; and our goal this year it to emphasize that everyone has a role to play in ending sexual assault, harassment, and abuse. In the U.S., more than 1 in 3 women experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during her lifetime. We often don’t want to address things like catcalling or locker-room talk when we hear it. But, ignoring what may seem “small” and “harmless” allows a culture of violence to pervade our community. By reading and discussing the stories of survivors of sexual assault, we hope to empower our community members to speak out against sexual violence when they see it in the media, in our schools, in our homes and in community spaces. Everyone has a role to play in ending sexual violence. What’s yours?

About SAFE Homes - Rape Crisis Coalition

We provide services to victims of domestic violence in Spartanburg, Cherokee and Union Counties and victims of sexual assault in Spartanburg and Cherokee Counties. Our services include emergency shelter, hospital accompaniment and advocacy for sexual assault victims during the medical/legal protocol, police and court accompaniment and advocacy, crisis counseling, individual and family psychotherapy, case management and follow-up.

Our mission is to use our collective voice to address the impact of domestic and sexual violence by providing quality services to those affected and to create social change through education, training, and activism.

About the Books

Finalist, 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
Winner, 2019 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Winner, 2018 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice

Apple orchards in bucolic Washington State. Office parks in Southern California under cover of night. The home of an elderly man in Miami. These are some of the workplaces where women have suffered brutal sexual assaults and shocking harassment at the hands of their employers, often with little or no official recourse. In this heartrending but ultimately inspiring tale, investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Bernice Yeung exposes the epidemic of sexual violence levied against the low-wage workers largely overlooked by #MeToo, and charts their quest for justice.

In a Day’s Work reveals the underbelly of hidden economies teeming with employers who are in the practice of taking advantage of immigrant women. But it also tells a timely story of resistance, introducing a group of courageous allies who challenge the status quo of violations alongside aggrieved workers—and win.

Sexual Citizens: Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan 

Research has shown that by the time they graduate, as many as one in three women and almost one in six men will have been sexually assaulted. But why is sexual assault such a common feature of college life, and what can be done to prevent it? Drawing on the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) at Columbia University, the most comprehensive study to date of sexual assault on a campus, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan present an entirely new framework that emphasizes sexual assault’s social roots, based on the powerful concepts of “sexual projects,” “sexual citizenship,” and “sexual geographies.” Empathic, insightful, and far-ranging, Sexual Citizens transforms our understanding of sexual assault and offers a roadmap for how to address it.

Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, edited by Lexie Bean

Lambda Literary Award Finalist - LGBTQ Anthology

Written by and for trans and non-binary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, Written on the Body offers support, guidance and hope for those who struggle to find safety at home, in the body, and other unwelcoming places.

This collection of letters written to body parts weaves together narratives of gender, identity, and abuse. It is the coming together of those who have been fragmented and often met with disbelief. The book holds the concerns and truths that many trans people share while offering space for dialogue and reclamation.

Written with intelligence and intimacy, this book is for those who have found power in re-shaping their bodies, families, and lives.