Every April, we take time to honor Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) and think about effective ways to engage with the occasion, renewing our support for survivors. Like so many other awareness months, as the years go on and our communities of allies are built up, we aim to take it past awareness into something deeper. More and more of our community is aware of the prevalence of sexual assault, which means we can move towards more actionable steps to fight and prevent it. One of the action items we are leaning into this SAAM is engaging with more survivor-centered content and media. This SAAM, we are recommending nine survivor-centered books to read in honor of the occasion. Many of them are written by survivors, too! Reading these books is one way to inform and expand your own allyship in the anti-sexual harm movement. 

As a general content warning, all of these books contain depictions and themes of sexual harm. Take good care if now is not the right moment to read them. 

Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System by Cyntoia Brown-Long with Bethany Mauger

You probably heard about #FreeCyntoia when this hashtag and story first went viral in 2017, gaining a huge wave of media attention towards Cyntoia Brown-Long, a teenage survivor of sex trafficking. Brown-Long was given a life sentence for killing a man in self-defense who had bought her for sex when she was 16 years old. Fifteen years later, she was granted clemency, free for the first time in her adulthood. 

There are factors that put people at a higher risk for being trafficked. As a person of color, a runaway, and someone involved in child-serving systems, along with various other experiences, Cyntoia’s story emphasizes how she, and many other incarcerated survivors like her end up in her position, navigating various systems that do not adequately protect them. 

The book dives into Brown-Long’s time in prison, how her story touched the hearts of so many on the outside who saw that her life sentence was unjust, and how she has since spent her life post-prison using her freedom to advocate for survivors of sexual violence and trafficking. CAASE was honored to host her for a conversation in 2020! Brown-Long’s memoir illustrates first-hand how sex trafficking survivors can be forced to make unimaginable decisions and the unwavering resilience they exhibit to rebuild their lives afterward. 

Know My Name by Chanel Miller 

For years, Chanel Miller was known only as “Emily Doe” in the criminal case against then-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner. Her victim impact statement went viral, read 11 million times in just four days. Later revealing her identity through this memoir, Miller bravely and thoughtfully reclaimed her story and invited us to know her and her experiences more deeply. Know My Name detailed her story about surviving this assault, and the years-long legal aftermath. Her story sparked much-needed conversations about campus sexual assault and the way that our current legal system dismisses and retraumatizes survivors. Miller’s story covers many common survivor experiences—navigating legal systems and cultures that too often protect abusers and perpetrators, the way shame, embarrassment, and guilt are misplaced onto the survivor, and the difficult and complicated journey survivors go through in their healing, coming out on the other side changed but unbroken. 

Leaving Breezy Street by Brenda Myers-Powell 

We are so proud that Brenda Myers-Powell is not only a founding board member of CAASE, but also a dedicated advocate and author of Leaving Breezy Street. In this memoir, Myers-Powell delves into her personal story and history as a survivor. Surviving abuse and other violence as a child, Myers-Powell then became a survivor of human trafficking, entered the sex trade at age 14, and survived it for the next 25 years. Her firsthand account of both her time in the sex trade and the rebuilding and transformation she’s made after is powerful. 

Myers-Powell is on a different, much more peaceful path now. She works on the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, advocating for survivors, and is also the co-founder of a partner organization here in Chicago, The Dreamcatcher Foundation. Reflecting on Leaving Breezy Street in an interview, Myers-Powell talks about the reception to her book going beyond her specific experiences and reaching women from all walks of life who recognize the pain she talks about, “So yes, I have a relatable story to all women. Not just prostitutes, not just women in human trafficking. Women in abuse, or any woman who has to fight like hell to be a woman.” 

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall 

Hood Feminism by Chicago native Mikki Kendall made a huge splash in feminist communities all over when it was published in 2020. Mainstream feminist conversations and discourse have often defaulted to white feminism, and it is always a welcome reminder to center the most marginalized among us to be able to make a difference for everyone. Kendell’s writing covers a variety of still current, but often overlooked issues, such as food insecurity, the need for living wages, and racial justice as gender justice. CAASE had the privilege of awarding Mikki Kendell our Visionary Award at our 2023 Celebrating Allies fundraiser. Kendall makes clear how issues like racism, gun violence, and poverty impact and exacerbate sexual harm. Hood Feminism is a great place to start to dive into, or revisit, the need for intersectionality in our feminism, and the progress that we miss out on when we overlook or disregard the margins.  

CHOSEN: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood by Stephen Mills 

Memoirs and other nonfiction writing from men survivors are harder to come across, even though research has shown that one in six men have been sexually assaulted or abused in their lives. In this book, Mills speaks to the experience of the way men and boys often must deal with an added layer of stigma as survivors of sexual harm because of the way our culture mislabels it as an issue exclusive to women and girls. 

In CHOSEN, Mills tells the story of being groomed and abused by an adult leader at a summer camp he attended at age 13. After years of trying to ignore this painful part of his past, Mills later realizes that he was not the only survivor of this abuser. Realizing how that trauma continued to impact him into adulthood, Mills finally confronts this experience and searches for justice and accountability, and in the process, finds healing.  

The Apology by V (formerly Eve Ensler) 

Author V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, famously wrote The Vagina Monologues in 1996. Over 20 years later, The Apology was published. Like many survivors, V waited for an apology from her abuser that never came. When her abuser, her father, died, V imagined and wrote that needed apology in book form from the perspective of her father. After a lifetime of processing her experiences, the perspective takes accountability and works through the sentiments and words V wanted to hear. The Apology explores the healing and transformation a survivor can create on their own. As a leading voice in mainstream feminist art, we are so lucky V gave many survivors the gift of finding a way to imagine and inhabit an apology even when it’s not available in the way the survivor deserves. 

On Being Raped by Raymond M. Douglas 

On Being Raped touches on several common themes that we hear many survivors grapple with in aftermath of sexual harm. As an eighteen-year-old, Douglas survived rape. He writes about the way his trauma impacted him physically and psychologically throughout his life. In On Being Raped, Douglas tells his own specific story of survival and dives into the way that our culture ignores, stigmatizes, and silences adult men survivors of rape. He also explores the prevalence of sexual harm in the Catholic church, inviting readers to reflect on and speak up about the experiences where sexual violence intersects with religious institutions. Douglas’s writing makes clear that our culture still has a long way to go in terms of believing survivors and helping them in their journeys towards healing and justice. Douglas hopes that by sharing his own story, other male survivors see that they are not alone in those challenges. 

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxane Gay 

Many are familiar with Roxane’s writing on sexual harm in her earlier work, like Hunger and Bad Feminist, earning her a reputation as one of today’s leading feminist authors and social commentators. She followed these books up with Not That Bad, an anthology of essays from a wide variety of writers with varying perspectives and experiences, with the common thread of sexual violence including sexual assault, harassment, and rape. These stories of survival capture a moment in our culture—one that is very much grappling with how to respond to rape culture, victim blaming, and misogyny. These stories share vulnerable and poignant experiences, giving readers much to reflect on as survivors themselves or as allies. 

Dear Judith by Jean Cozier 

Jean Cozier is not only an author and survivor, but also the founder of Awakenings Art, a Chicago nonprofit that provides survivors of sexual violence with trauma-informed, inclusive art-making experience that encourages healing. Jean had dedicated her life to advocating for survivors. One of the ways she has done this was through an especially personal project, this book, Dear Judith. Jean and Judith were cousins who began writing to each other, later realizing that they were both survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Over the course of eight years of writing to one another, they provide a powerful source of support and validation to one another. Dear Judith beautifully showcases how deeply survivors can help one another heal and process by making each other feel seen and understood. 

We hope these books and stories can be compelling, cathartic, or educational to you. While their subject matter can feel challenging or uncomfortable, reading survivor-centered books helps shed light on the experiences and perspectives of survivors, helping us to inform the ways we can all offer support and resources to survivors in their healing journeys. SAAM always serves as a reminder that while every survivor has a different story, circumstances, and identity, there is always a throughline of courage, strength, and perseverance in survivorship across the stories like these, as well as the ones never shared publicly.  

This piece was published on April 7, 2025. It was authored by Lizzy Springer and edited by Kaethe Morris Hoffer. Learn more about our staff here.