Lending Library

NYSCASA’s Lending Library offers books, videos and other materials on a wide range of topics of interest to sexual violence survivors and advocates. Materials may be requested and borrowed by NYSCASA members.

Our online catalog is in progress. In the meantime, please feel free to review our staff picks below and contact info@nyscasa.org to learn more about materials available to our members.

Lending Library Staff Picks

Healing/Surviving Sexual Violence

A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound – Donna Hylton, with Kristine Gasbarre

Like so many women before her and so many women yet to come, Donna Hylton’s early life was a nightmare of abuse that left her feeling alone and convinced of her worthlessness. A Little Piece of Light tells the heartfelt, often harrowing tale of Hylton’s journey back to life as she faced the truth about a crime that locked her away for 27 years…and celebrated the family she found inside prison that ultimately saved her. Behind the bars of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, alongside this generation’s most infamous criminals, Hylton learned to fight, then thrive. For the first time in her life, she realized she was not alone in the abuse and misogyny she experienced—and she was also not alone in fighting back.

From Ashes to Angel’s Dust: A Journey Through Womanhood – Zoë Flowers

Like many young women, Zoë ­­­Flowers found herself in a dangerous relationship in her early twenties. Flowers ended the relationship after a short time, but the experience motivated her to be a catalyst for real change. She started conducting candid interviews with women about their experiences with domestic, dating, and sexual violence. From Ashes to Angel’s Dust: A Journey Through Womanhood is the book that emerged from those early interviews. It is a unique collection of candid interviews, national resources, healing techniques, and the author’s poetry.

Healing My Life from Incest to Joy – Donna Jenson

In chronicling the physical and spiritual steps she took to reclaim her life and peel away the layers of damage done by incest, Donna Jenson has written a powerful narrative of one person’s healing journey. And though the subject matter is deeply serious, Jenson writes with her sense of humor firmly intact, reminding us that joy is possible in the face of great pain. Poignant, brave, and helpful, Healing My Life from Incest to Joy offers a much-needed testimony for anyone affected by or concerned about childhood sexual abuse.

We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out – Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, eds.

More than one in five women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted while at college. Some survivors are coming forward; others are not. In We Believe You, students from every kind of college and university―large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so―share experiences of trauma, healing, and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities, and loves. Theirs is a bold, irrefutable sampling of voices and stories that should speak to all.

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

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 write 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-defining event? Is one rape worse than another? Is a world without rape possible?

Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault – Jen Sookfong Lee and Stacey May Fowles, eds.

Through the voices of twelve diverse writers, Whatever Gets You Through offers a powerful look at the narrative of sexual assault not covered by the headlines—the weeks, months, and years of survival and adaptation that people live through in its aftermath. With a foreword by Jessica Valenti, an extensive introduction by editors Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee, and contributions from acclaimed literary voices such as Alicia Elliott, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Heather O’Neill, and Juliane Okot Bitek, the collection explores some of the many different forms that survival can take.

Healing from Trauma and PTSD

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – Bessel van der Kolk

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others – Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself. In Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way. Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices, drawn from modern psychology and a range of spiritual traditions, that enable us to look carefully at our reactions and motivations and discover new sources of energy and renewal. She includes interviews with successful trauma stewards from different walks of life and even uses New Yorker cartoons to illustrate her points. “We can do meaningful work in a way that works for us and for those we serve,” Lipsky writes. “Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others allows us to contribute to our societies with such impact that we will leave a legacy informed by our deepest wisdom and greatest gifts instead of burdened by our struggles and despair.

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body – David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga is a book for survivors, clinicians, and yoga instructors who are interested in mind/body healing. It introduces trauma-sensitive yoga, a modified approach to yoga developed in collaboration between yoga teachers and clinicians at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, led by yoga teacher David Emerson, along with medical doctor Bessel van der Kolk. The book begins with an in-depth description of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including a description of how trauma is held in the body and the need for body-based treatment. It offers a brief history of yoga, describes various styles of yoga commonly found in Western practice, and identifies four key themes of trauma-sensitive yoga. Chair-based exercises are described that can be incorporated into individual or group therapy, targeting specific treatment goals, and modifications are offered for mat-based yoga classes. Each exercise includes trauma-sensitive language to introduce the practice, as well as photographs to illustrate the poses. The practices have been offered to a wide range of individuals and groups, including men and women, teens, returning veterans, and others. Rounded out by valuable quotes and case stories, the book presents mindfulness, breathing, and yoga exercises that can be used by home practitioners, yoga teachers, and therapists as a way to cultivate awareness, tolerance, and an increased acceptance of the self.

Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy: Brain, Body, and Imagination in the Healing Process – Cathy A. Malchiodi

From pioneering therapist Cathy A. Malchiodi, this book synthesizes the breadth of research on trauma and the brain and presents an innovative framework for treating trauma through the expressive arts. The volume describes powerful ways to tap into deeply felt bodily and sensory experiences as a foundation for safely exploring emotions, memories, and personal narratives. Rich clinical examples illustrate the use of movement, sound, play, art, and drama with children and adults. Malchiodi’s approach not only enables survivors to express experiences that defy verbalization, but also helps them to transform and integrate the trauma, regain a sense of aliveness, and imagine a new future.

Child Sexual Abuse

Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse – Aishah Shahidah Simmons, editor

Despite the current survivor-affirming awareness around sexual violence, child sexual abuse, most notably when it’s a family member or friend, is still a very taboo topic. There are approximately 42 million child sexual abuse survivors in the U.S. and millions of bystanders who look the other way as the abuse occurs and cover for the harm-doers with no accountability. Documentary filmmaker and survivor of child sexual abuse and adult rape, Aishah Shahidah Simmons invites diasporic Black people to join her in transformative storytelling that envisions a world that ends child sexual abuse without relying on the criminal justice system. Love WITH Accountability features compelling writings by child sexual abuse survivors, advocates, and Simmons’s mother, who underscores the detrimental impact of parents/caregivers not believing their children when they disclose their sexual abuse. This collection explores disrupting the inhumane epidemic of child sexual abuse, humanely.

Healing My Life from Incest to Joy – Donna Jenson

In chronicling the physical and spiritual steps she took to reclaim her life and peel away the layers of damage done by incest, Donna Jenson has written a powerful narrative of one person’s healing journey. And though the subject matter is deeply serious, Jenson writes with her sense of humor firmly intact, reminding us that joy is possible in the face of great pain. Poignant, brave, and helpful, Healing My Life from Incest to Joy offers a much-needed testimony for anyone affected by or concerned about childhood sexual abuse.

Campus Sexual Violence

We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out – Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, eds.

More than one in five women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted while at college. Some survivors are coming forward; others are not. In We Believe You, students from every kind of college and university―large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so―share experiences of trauma, healing, and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities, and loves. Theirs is a bold, irrefutable sampling of voices and stories that should speak to all.

Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus – Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan

Drawing on the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) at Columbia University, the most comprehensive study of sexual assault on a campus to date, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan present an entirely new framework that emphasizes sexual assault’s social roots―transcending current debates about consent, predators in a “hunting ground,” and the dangers of hooking up. Hirsch and Khan’s landmark study reveals the social ecosystem that makes sexual assault so predictable, explaining how physical spaces, alcohol, peer groups, and cultural norms influence young people’s experiences and interpretations of both sex and sexual assault. Through the powerful concepts of “sexual projects,” “sexual citizenship,” and “sexual geographies,” the authors offer a new and widely-accessible language for understanding the forces that shape young people’s sexual relationships. Empathetic, insightful, and far-ranging, Sexual Citizens transforms our understanding of sexual assault and offers a roadmap for how to address it.

Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education – Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William E. Thro

This book examines the history and evolution of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William Thro illuminate the ways in which the interpretation and implementation of Title IX have been transformed over time to extend far beyond the law’s relatively narrow statutory text. The analysis considers the impact of Title IX on athletics, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and, for a time, transgender discrimination. Combining legal and cultural perspectives and supported by primary documents, Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education offers a balanced and insightful narrative of interest to anyone studying the history of sex discrimination, educational policy, and the law in the contemporary United States.

It Happened Here: Stories of Sexual Assault on Campus – Film directed by Lisa F. Jackson

It Happened Here exposes the alarming pervasiveness of rape and sexual assault on college campuses, explores the failure of these institutions to take disciplinary action, and follows the burgeoning movement of student survivors breaking the silence around this complex issue and demanding accountability and change, on campus and in federal court. Through the personal testimonials of five student survivors from three schools, the film explores the nature and impact of campus assault on the individual, their family and institution, asking why is sexual assault and “rape culture” so prevalent? What prevention and disciplinary measures are being taken? And are those in power making changes?

The Hunting Ground – Film directed by Kirby Dick

The Hunting Ground is a startling exposé of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. Weaving together vérité footage and first-person testimonies, the film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible pushback, harassment, and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.

Violence Against Black Women

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation – Beth E. Richie

Black women in marginalized communities are uniquely at risk of battering, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and incest. Through the compelling stories of Black women who have been most affected by racism, persistent poverty, class inequality, limited access to support resources or institutions, Beth E. Richie shows that the threat of violence to Black women has never been more serious, demonstrating how conservative legal, social, political and economic policies have impacted activism in the US-based movement to end violence against women. Richie argues that Black women face particular peril because of the ways that race and culture have not figured centrally enough in the analysis of the causes and consequences of gender violence. As a result, the extent of physical, sexual and other forms of violence in the lives of Black women, the various forms it takes, and the contexts within which it occurs are minimized at best and frequently ignored. Arrested Justice brings issues of sexuality, class, age, and criminalization into focus right alongside of questions of public policy and gender violence, resulting in a compelling critique, a passionate re-framing of stories, and a call to action for change.

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and ResistanceA New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power – Danielle L. McGuire

Groundbreaking, controversial, and courageous, here is the story of Rosa Parks and Recy Taylor—a story that reinterprets the history of America’s civil rights movement in terms of the sexual violence committed against black women by white men.

In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer–Rosa Parks–to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against black women and added fire to the growing call for change.

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color – Andrea J. Ritchie

Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. Placing stories of individual women—such as Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall—in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, it documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

Violence Against Indigenous Women

The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America – Sarah Deer

Despite what major media sources say, violence against Native women is not an epidemic. An epidemic is biological and blameless. Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer’s work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on—and ending it.

The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer, who played a crucial role in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse. Deer provides a clear historical overview of rape and sex trafficking in North America, paying particular attention to the gendered legacy of colonialism in tribal nations—a truth largely overlooked or minimized by Native and non-Native observers. She faces this legacy directly, articulating strategies for Native communities and tribal nations seeking redress. In a damning critique of federal law that has accommodated rape by destroying tribal legal systems, she describes how tribal self-determination efforts of the twenty-first century can be leveraged to eradicate violence against women. Her work bridges the gap between Indian law and feminist thinking by explaining how intersectional approaches are vital to addressing the rape of Native women.

Providing Gender-Affirming Sexual Assault Services

Shades of Change: A Guide for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Service Providers Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People of Color – In Our Own Voices, Inc.

Shades of Change, published by In Our Own Voices, is a guide for domestic violence and sexual assault service providers working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of color. The information provided in this guide offers an overview of assessment and practices that are currently utilized at In Our Own Voices in preventing, responding to, and healing the impact of domestic violence and sexual assault within the LGBT POC community. The framework and resources provided in this guide are especially relevant to service organizations, community based organizations, and individuals who want to increase their capacity to provide culturally responsive intervention and prevention services.

Open Minds Open Doors: Transforming Domestic Violence Programs to Include LGBTQ Survivors – The Network/La Red

Published by The Network/La Red, Open Minds Open Doors is a manual on how to transform your domestic violence program to be more inclusive of LGBQ/T survivors. Applicable for sexual violence programs and dual/multi-service programs.

A Clinician’s Guide to Gender-Affirming Care: Working with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Clients – Sand C. Chang, Anneliese A. Singh, and lore m. dickey

Transgender and gender nonconforming (TNGC) clients have complex mental health concerns, and are more likely than ever to seek out treatment. This comprehensive resource outlines the latest research and recommendations to provide you with the requisite knowledge, skills, and awareness to treat TNGC clients with competent and affirming care.

Written by three psychologists who specialize in working with the TGNC population, this important book draws on the perspective that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for working with TNGC clients. It offers interventions tailored to developmental stages and situational factors—for example, cultural intersections such as race, class, and religion. This book provides up-to-date information on language, etiquette, and appropriate communication and conduct in treating TGNC clients, and discusses the history, cultural context, and ethical and legal issues that can arise in working with gender-diverse individuals in a clinical setting. You’ll also find information about informed consent approaches that call for a shift in the role of the mental health provider in the position of assessment and referral for the purposes of gender-affirming medical care (such as hormones, surgery, and other procedures).

As changes in recent transgender health care and insurance coverage have provided increased access for a broader range of consumers, it is essential to understand transgender and gender nonconforming clients’ different needs. This book provides practical exercises and skills you can use to help TNGC clients thrive.

Counseling Transgender and Non-Binary Youth: The Essential Guide – Irwin Krieger

There are growing numbers of youth who identify as transgender, and as a result, clinicians and counselors are in need of an informed resource that covers the basics of gender identity and expression. This book responds to that need by setting out clear advice and support on working with transgender and non-binary youth with regard to their identity, mental health, personal and family life and their medical and social transition as well as offering additional resources and reading lists.

Along with the basic information needed to understand transgender clients, Irwin Krieger applies this general knowledge to work with transgender teens at what can be the most critical and problematic stage in a trans person’s life. Specifically, issues of gender identity awareness and expression for youth along with the mental and physical challenges that puberty presents are discussed. This guide will inform counselors and therapists to support transgender teens in their practice, while providing the necessary tools for opening up the conversation on transgender issues in families and schools.

Supporting Young Transgender Men: A Guide for Professionals – Matthew Waites

There is currently a lack of information available regarding the specific needs of young transgender men, and the barriers that they face. This can lead to professionals having to give generic advice, which may not be appropriate for the situation. Written to address this shortfall, this book provides professionals with the guidance they need to effectively and supportively work with young transgender men. It looks at some of the obstacles that trans men face across health and care services. Addressing topics such as the social impact of transitioning, the potential impact on mental health and emotional wellbeing and common myths and misconceptions about transitioning, this guide is essential for anyone working with young transgender men.

Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People in Our Lives – Davey Shlasko

Revised, updated and expanded for 2017 – the new Trans Allyship Workbook is everything you’ve been wanting to read about trans allyship! A workbook to help you build your understanding of trans communities and develop concrete skills for supporting trans people in your life, with over 100 pages of explanation, activities, illustrations and reflections including –

  • New sections on intersectionality, singular they, and philosophies of allyship
  • Tips and “best practices” for the special allyship situations of parents, teachers, healthcare providers and therapists
  • Tons of new color illustrations
  • New activities – it really is a “workbook” – to help you deepen and practice your allyship skills
  • Extensive glossary to get updated on recent evolutions in trans terminology
  • Resource lists to help you take the next steps in your learning, whether for personal or professional development

Working with Transgender and Gender Expansive Clients: A Foundational Guide for Therapists, Student Edition – Traci W. Lowenthal

Clinical therapists and mental health providers who care for transgender and gender-expansive clients must be more than merely tolerant, more than LGBTQIA+ “friendly.” To be truly affirming of expansive people, providers must be knowledgeable and continuously expanding that knowledge as the communities evolve and expand. This book offers insights and up-to-date practical advice for clinical therapists and mental health providers contemplating care for transgender and gender-expansive clients.

Sexual Violence and the Criminal Legal System

All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence – Emily L. Thuma

During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anti-carceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, prisoners’ and psychiatric patients’ rights, and gender and sexual liberation.

All Our Trials explores the organizing, ideas, and influence of those who placed criminalized and marginalized women at the heart of their antiviolence mobilizations. This activism confronted a “tough on crime” political agenda and clashed with the mainstream women’s movement’s strategy of resorting to the criminal legal system as a solution to sexual and domestic violence. Drawing on extensive archival research and first-person narratives, Thuma weaves together the stories of mass defense campaigns, prisoner uprisings, broad-based local coalitions, national gatherings, and radical print cultures that cut through prison walls. In the process, she illuminates a crucial chapter in an unfinished struggle––one that continues in today’s movements against mass incarceration and in support of transformative justice.

After the Crime: The Power of Restorative Justice Dialogues Between Victims and Violent Offenders – Susan L. Miller

Too often, the criminal justice system silences victims, which leaves them frustrated, angry, and with many unanswered questions. Despite their rage and pain, many victims want the opportunity to confront their offenders and find resolution. After the Crime explores a victim-offender dialogue program that offers victims of severe violence an opportunity to meet face-to-face with their incarcerated offenders. Using rich in-depth interview data, the book follows the harrowing stories of crimes of stranger rape, domestic violence, marital rape, incest, child sexual abuse, murder, and drunk driving, ultimately moving beyond story-telling to provide an accessible scholarly analysis of restorative justice. Author Susan Miller argues that the program has significantly helped the victims who chose to face their offenders in very concrete, transformative ways. Likewise, the offenders have also experienced positive changes in their lives in terms of creating greater accountability and greater victim empathy. After the Crime explores their transformative experiences with restorative justice, vividly illustrating how one program has worked in conjunction with the criminal justice system in order to strengthen victim empowerment.

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation – Beth E. Richie

Black women in marginalized communities are uniquely at risk of battering, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and incest. Through the compelling stories of Black women who have been most affected by racism, persistent poverty, class inequality, limited access to support resources or institutions, Beth E. Richie shows that the threat of violence to Black women has never been more serious, demonstrating how conservative legal, social, political and economic policies have impacted activism in the US-based movement to end violence against women. Richie argues that Black women face particular peril because of the ways that race and culture have not figured centrally enough in the analysis of the causes and consequences of gender violence. As a result, the extent of physical, sexual and other forms of violence in the lives of Black women, the various forms it takes, and the contexts within which it occurs are minimized at best and frequently ignored. Arrested Justice brings issues of sexuality, class, age, and criminalization into focus right alongside of questions of public policy and gender violence, resulting in a compelling critique, a passionate re-framing of stories, and a call to action for change.

A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound – Donna Hylton, with Kristine Gasbarre

Like so many women before her and so many women yet to come, Donna Hylton’s early life was a nightmare of abuse that left her feeling alone and convinced of her worthlessness. A Little Piece of Light tells the heartfelt, often harrowing tale of Hylton’s journey back to life as she faced the truth about a crime that locked her away for 27 years…and celebrated the family she found inside prison that ultimately saved her. Behind the bars of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, alongside this generation’s most infamous criminals, Hylton learned to fight, then thrive. For the first time in her life, she realized she was not alone in the abuse and misogyny she experienced—and she was also not alone in fighting back.

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States – Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock

A groundbreaking work that turns a “queer eye” on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences—as “suspects,” defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes—like “gleeful gay killers,” “lethal lesbians,” “disease spreaders,” and “deceptive gender benders”—to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, they prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities.

Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair – Danielle Sered

In a book Democracy Now! calls a “complete overhaul of the way we’ve been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice,” Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy.

Feminist Theory and Perspectives

Feminist Accountability: Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power – Ann Russo

What does it take to build communities to stand up to injustice and create social change? How do we work together to transform, without reproducing, systems of violence and oppression? In an age when feminism has become increasingly mainstream, noted feminist scholar and activist Ann Russo asks feminists to consider the ways that our own behavior might contribute to the interlocking systems of oppression that we aim to dismantle.

Feminist Accountability offers an intersectional analysis of three main areas of feminism in practice: anti-racist work, community accountability and transformative justice, and US-based work in and about violence in the global south. Russo explores accountability as a set of frameworks and practices for community- and movement-building against oppression and violence. Rather than evading the ways that we are implicated, complicit, or actively engaged in harm, Russo shows us how we might cultivate accountability so that we can contribute to the feminist work of transforming oppression and violence.

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, editor

The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles.

Living a Feminist Life – Sarah Ahmed

In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good – adrienne maree brown

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.

Healing Justice

Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers – Loretta Pyles

In the context of multiple forms of global economic, social, and cultural oppression, along with intergenerational trauma, burnout, and public services retrenchment, this book offers a framework and set of inquiries and practices for social workers, activists, community organizers, counselors, and other helping professionals. Healing justice, a term that has emerged in social movements in the last decade, is taught as a practice of connecting to the whole self, what many are conditioned to ignore—the body, mind-heart, spirit, community, and natural world.

Drawing from the East-West modalities of mindfulness, yoga, and Ayurveda, the author introduces six capabilities—mindfulness and compassion; critical thinking and curiosity; and effort and equanimity—which can guide practitioners on a transformative and empowering journey that can ultimately make them and their colleagues more effective in their work. Using case studies, critical analysis, and skill sharing, self-care is presented as an act of resistance to disconnection, marginalization, and internalized oppression. Healing justice is a trauma-informed practice that empowers social practitioners to cultivate the conditions that might allow them to feel more connected to themselves, their clients, colleagues, and communities.

The book also engages critically with self-care practices, including investigation into the science of mindfulness, cultural appropriation, and the commodification of self-care. The message is clear that mindfulness-based practices are not a panacea for personal, inter-personal, or political problems. But, they can put practitioners in a more authentic and powerful place to work from, which is particularly important in a world where there is more connection to technology, ideologies, and people who share one’s beliefs, and less connection to the natural world, people who are different, and the parts of oneself that one tends to reject. The book also offers suggestions for how to share self-care practices with community members who have less access to wellness.

Restorative Justice

After the Crime: The Power of Restorative Justice Dialogues Between Victims and Violent Offenders – Susan L. Miller

Too often, the criminal justice system silences victims, which leaves them frustrated, angry, and with many unanswered questions. Despite their rage and pain, many victims want the opportunity to confront their offenders and find resolution. After the Crime explores a victim-offender dialogue program that offers victims of severe violence an opportunity to meet face-to-face with their incarcerated offenders. Using rich in-depth interview data, the book follows the harrowing stories of crimes of stranger rape, domestic violence, marital rape, incest, child sexual abuse, murder, and drunk driving, ultimately moving beyond story-telling to provide an accessible scholarly analysis of restorative justice. Author Susan Miller argues that the program has significantly helped the victims who chose to face their offenders in very concrete, transformative ways. Likewise, the offenders have also experienced positive changes in their lives in terms of creating greater accountability and greater victim empathy. After the Crime explores their transformative experiences with restorative justice, vividly illustrating how one program has worked in conjunction with the criminal justice system in order to strengthen victim empowerment.

Healing from Sexual Violence: The Case for Vicarious Restorative Justice – Alissa R. Ackerman and Jill S. Levenson

Vicarious restorative justice (VRJ) is a practice that allows individuals who have experienced sexual harm to sit face to face with individuals who have perpetrated it. The concept of VRJ is not new, but it has not been utilized for healing from sexual trauma until recently. Healing from Sexual Violence explains what vicarious restorative justice is and how it promotes healing without re-traumatizing people. It provides a solid framework for incorporating VRJ into

clinical practices and communities with material on using trauma-informed approaches. The authors include real-life examples of the power of VRJ, including their own personal stories. This is a book that is both visionary and practical.

Heart of Hope: A Guide for Using Peacemaking Circles to Develop Emotional Literacy, Promote Healing, and Build Healthy Relationships – Carolyn Boyes-Watson and Kay Pranis

Heart of Hope provides specific formats for conducting effective Circles around developing emotional literacy and building healthy relationships. The book is being used extensively in schools by teachers and administrators as well as in health care facilities and elder abuse programs.

The Big Book of Restorative Justice: Four Classic Justice & Peacebuilding Books in One Volume – Howard Zehr, Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Allan MacRae, and Kay Pranis

Restorative justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal while holding criminals accountable for their actions. This is not a soft-on-crime, feel-good philosophy, but rather a concrete effort to bring justice and healing to everyone involved in a crime. Circle processes draw from the Native American tradition of gathering in a circle to solve problems as a community. Peacemaking circles are used in neighborhoods, in schools, in the workplace, and in social services to support victims of all kinds, resolve behavior problems, and create positive climates.

Each book is written by a scholar at the forefront of these movements, making this important reading for classrooms, community leaders, and anyone involved with conflict resolution. This volume includes four classic justice and peacebuilding books:

  • The Little Book of Restorative Justice: Revised and Updated
  • The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing
  • The Little Book of Family Group Conferences
  • The Little Book of Circle Processes

The Little Book of Circle Processes: A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking – Kay Pranis

This book explores the peacemaking potential of circle processes, a storytelling practice drawn from various Indigenous traditions. Circle processes offer a way of bringing people together to understand one another, strengthen bonds, and solve community problems—a necessity in an era of division, polarized politics, and angry debate. Peacemaking circles are used in neighborhoods to provide support for those harmed by crime and to decide sentences for those who commit crime, in schools to create positive classroom climates and resolve behavior problems, in the workplace to deal with conflict, and in social services to develop more organic support systems for people struggling to get their lives together. The circle process hinges on storytelling. It is an effort bringing astonishing results around the country.

The Little Book of Family Group Conferences: New Zealand Style – Allan MacRae and Howard Zehr

Family Group Conferences (FGCs) are the primary forum in New Zealand for dealing with juvenile crime as well as child welfare issues. This third volume in The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series is about the juvenile justice system that is built around these conferences.

Since their introduction in New Zealand, Family Group Conferences have been adopted and adapted in many places throughout the world. They have been applied in many arenas including child welfare, school discipline, and criminal justice, both juvenile and adult. In fact, FGCs have emerged as one of the most promising models of restorative justice. This Little Book describes the basics and rationale for this approach to juvenile justice, as well as how an FGC is conducted.

The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Sexual Abuse: Hope Through Trauma – Judah Oudshoorn, Michelle Jackett, and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz

Restorative justice is gaining acceptance for addressing harm and crime. Interventions have been developed for a wide range of wrongdoing. This book considers the use of restorative justice in response to sexual abuse. Rather than a blueprint or detailing a specific set of programs, it is more about mapping possibilities. It allows people to carefully consider its use in responding to violent crimes such as sexual abuse. This book also describes impacts of sexual abuse and demonstrates how restorative justice can create hope through trauma.

The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding: A Vision and Framework for Peace with Justice – Lisa Schirch

So we’d all like a more peaceful world—no wars, no poverty, no more racism, no community disputes, no office tensions, no marital skirmishes. Lisa Schirch sets forth paths to such realities. In fact, she points a way to more than the absence of conflict. She foresees just peace—a sustainable state of affairs because it is a peace which insists on justice. Schirch singles out four critical actions that must be undertaken if peace is to take root at any level: waging conflict nonviolently, reducing direct violence, transforming relationships; and building capacity.

The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing: A Hopeful, Practical Approach to Dialogue – David Anderson Hooker

In The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing, David Anderson Hooker offers a hopeful, accessible approach to dialogue that:

  • Integrates several practice approaches including restorative justice, peacebuilding, and arts
  • Creates welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue
  • Names and maps complex conflicts, such as racial tensions, religious divisions, environmental issues, and community development as it narrates simple stories
  • Builds relationships and foundations for trust needed to support long-term community transformation projects
  • And results in the crafting of hopeful, future-oriented visions of community that can transform relationships, resource allocation, and structures in service of communities’ preferred narratives.

Hooker presents an important, stand-alone process, an excellent addition to the study and practice of strategic peacebuilding, restorative justice, conflict transformation, trauma healing, and community organizing.
This book recognizes the complexity of conflict, choosing long-term solutions over inadequate quick fixes. The Transformative Community Conferencing model emerges from the author’s thirty years of practice in contexts as diverse as South Sudan; Mississippi; Greensboro, North Carolina; Oakland, California; and Nassau, Bahamas.

Transformative Justice and Community Accountability

Feminist Accountability: Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power – Ann Russo

What does it take to build communities to stand up to injustice and create social change? How do we work together to transform, without reproducing, systems of violence and oppression? In an age when feminism has become increasingly mainstream, noted feminist scholar and activist Ann Russo asks feminists to consider the ways that our own behavior might contribute to the interlocking systems of oppression that we aim to dismantle.

Feminist Accountability offers an intersectional analysis of three main areas of feminism in practice: anti-racist work, community accountability and transformative justice, and US-based work in and about violence in the global south. Russo explores accountability as a set of frameworks and practices for community- and movement-building against oppression and violence. Rather than evading the ways that we are implicated, complicit, or actively engaged in harm, Russo shows us how we might cultivate accountability so that we can contribute to the feminist work of transforming oppression and violence.

Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement – Jennifer Patterson, editor

Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender, and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement locates them at the center of the anti-violence movement and creates a space for their voices to be heard. Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional violence against women framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered. This 37-piece collection disrupts the mainstream conversations about sexual violence and connects them to disability justice, sex worker rights, healing justice, racial justice, gender self-determination, queer & trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition through reflections, personal narrative, and strategies for resistance and healing.

The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities – Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, eds.

This watershed collection breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “secret” of intimate violence within social justice circles. Just as importantly, it provides practical strategies for dealing with abuse and creating safety without relying on the coercive power of the state. It offers life-saving alternatives for survivors, while building a movement where no one is left behind.

Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture – Nora Samaran

As Nora Samaran writes, “violence is nurturance turned backwards.” In its place, she proposes “nurturance culture” as the opposite of rape culture, suggesting that models of care and accountability—different from “call-outs” rooted in the politics of guilt—can move toward dismantling systems of dominance and oppression.

When communities identify and interrupt systemic violence, prioritize the needs of those harmed, and hold a circle of belonging that humanizes everyone, they create a foundation that can begin to resist and repair the harms inflicted by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Emerging from insights in gender studies, race theory, and psychology, and influenced by contemporary social movements, Turn This World Inside Out engages today’s crucial questions, helping move us beyond seemingly intractable barriers to collective change.

Includes the essays “The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture,” “On Gaslighting,” and “Own, Apologize, Repair,” as well as conversations with Serena Bhandar, Ruby Smith Díaz, Aravinda Ananda, Natalie Knight, and Alix Johnson.

Conflict Resolution and Transformation

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior – Kerry Patterson et al

In this updated second edition (first edition titled “Crucial Confrontations”), you’ll learn how to hold anyone accountable, master performance discussions, and get results. Crucial Accountability teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand without harming the relationship—and, in fact, even strengthens it. The book offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life and for resolving all these problems—permanently

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High – Kerry Patterson et al

The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to: prepare for high-stakes situations; transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue; make it safe to talk about almost anything; and be persuasive, not abrasive.

The Little Book of Conflict Transformation – John Paul Lederach

A guide to conflict resolution, or as the author prefers, “conflict transformation” that emphasizes the importance of building relationships and social structures through a radical respect for human rights and life. Firmly rooted in faith and Mennonite teachings, and related to the popular concept of restorative justice, conflict transformation is an idea with a deep reach. Its practice, says Lederach, requires “both solutions and social change.” It asks not simply “How do we end something not desired?” but “How do we end something destructive and build something desired?” How do we deal with the immediate crisis, as well as the long-term situation? What disciplines make such thinking and practices possible?

The Little Book of Cool Tools for Hot Topics: Group Tools to Facilitate Meetings When Things Are Hot – Ron Kraybill and Evelyn Wright

Some subjects seem too hot for a group to discuss sanely. Not necessarily. The Little Book of “Cool Tools for Hot Topics” shows how to help people hear each other when they feel like shouting; how to focus on the issues at stake rather than having a war of personalities; how to employ actual practices for better understanding (interviews, small-group discussions, role-reversal presentations); and how to move a group toward making a decision that all can honestly support.

The Little Book of Dialogue for Difficult Subjects: A Practical, Hands-On Guide – Lisa Schirch and David Campt

The word “dialogue” suffers from over-use, yet its practice is as transforming and as freshly hopeful as ever. Authors Schirch and Campt demonstrate dialogue’s life and possibilities in this clear and absorbing manual: “Dialogue allows people in conflict to listen to each other, affirm their common ground, and explore their differences in a safe environment.” Chapters include: Defending Dialogue, Organizing a Dialogue Process, Moving from Dialogue to Action, Assessing Dialogue Effectiveness and more.

The Little Book of Strategic Negotiation: Negotiating During Turbulent Times – Jayne Seminare Docherty

Most books on negotiation assume that the negotiators are in a stable setting. But what about those far thornier times when negotiation needs to happen while other fundamental factors are in uproarious change—deciding which parent will have custody of their child while a divorce is underway; bargaining between workers and management during the course of a merger and downsizing; or establishing a new government as a civil war winds down.

Working with People who have Perpetuated Sexual Violence

Trauma-Informed Care: Transforming Treatment for People Who Have Sexually Abused – Jill S. Levenson, Gwenda M. Willis, and David S. Prescott

In this book, readers will become well-versed in the cross-disciplinary research describing the impact of early childhood trauma on cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral development. The authors focus on two general skills: 1) case conceptualization and 2) trauma-informed responding. Readers will be able to define principles of trauma-informed care, identify its essential components, and conceptualize cases through a perspective informed by trauma research. The goal is to help clinicians working with sex offenders transform their interventions to a collaborative and dynamic, process-oriented approach that uses the therapeutic encounter as a corrective emotional experience. And, ultimately, more effective treatment. The book is filled with case studies and examples to illustrate the concepts.

Effective Intervention with Adolescents Who Have Offended Sexually: Translating Research into Practice – Sue Righthand, Brittany Baird, Ineke Way, and Michael C. Seto

Adolescents who have offended sexually are a diverse population, with different treatment needs. Individualized and evidence-based assessment and treatment are essential. The main goal of this book is to summarize research to highlight dynamic risk factors that are important treatment targets. This small, but information-filled book is a must-have reference.

Applying the Good Lives and Self-Regulation Models to Sex Offender Treatment: A Practical Guide for Clinicians – Pamela M. Yates, David Prescott, and Tony Ward

This is the first and only comprehensive guide to integrating the Good Lives and Self-Regulation models into a treatment program for people who have sexually abused. The authors present the two models as a combined program to help these individuals achieve two goals: building a lifestyle incompatible with offending and effectively managing risk. This thorough, step-by-step guide first presents the fundamentals, continues with sections on assessment and treatment, and wraps up with post-treatment maintenance and supervision.

The Good Lives Model for Adolescents Who Sexually Harm – Bobbie Print, editor

This book explains why an agency in the United Kingdom, G-map Treatment Centre in Manchester, chose to move to the Good Lives Model (GLM) and how they adapted the model for work with adolescents. With contributions from Tony Beech and the team at G-map, this book is grounded in six years of practical experience, with how-to chapters on motivating and engaging young people, assessment, GLM planning, transitions and evaluation, and more. This book is a must for any treatment provider looking to stay on top of the field’s latest advances.

Safer Society Handbook of Sexual Abuser Assessment and Treatment – Mark S. Carich and Steven E. Musack, eds.

Safer Society Press joined with editors Steven Mussack and Mark Carich to engage a team of top experts in the field of sexual offender assessment and treatment to create this handbook. The volume provides clinicians with the most current empirically and clinically supported methods for assessing the treatment needs of sexual offenders and providing them with effective treatment. The chapter authors we invited to write about their areas of specialization are respected authorities in the field, and most are also clinicians. Each chapter provides readers with effective tools they can directly apply to their clinical work. With 16 information-filled chapters, and two practical appendices, the handbook is a must-have reference for any professional working with adult sex offenders.

Safer Society Handbook of Assessment and Treatment of Adolescents Who Have Sexually Offended – Sue Righthand and William D. Murphy, eds.

The Safer Society Handbook of Assessment and Treatment with Adolescents Who Have Sexually Offended was designed to not only assist current practitioners (e.g., clinicians, attorneys, juvenile justice personnel and so forth) and policy makers, but also to prepare the next generation (advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of psychology, social work, criminal justice, public policy and so forth) in facilitating developmentally appropriate, safe, and cost-effective interventions when sexual offending by adolescents occurs. The book integrates relevant research that will enable readers to understand the dynamic nature of adolescent development and appreciate that healthy sexual behavior is a natural and normal part of growing up. The book has been widely acclaimed to be scientifically comprehensive, legally relevant, developmentally sensitive, and clinically sophisticated. To write this book, the editors brought together an international team of leading experts on youths who have exhibited sexually harmful behavior to write this single-volume reference on the characteristics of those who offend, best practice in assessment and intervention, community reentry and family reunification, and special issues for professionals working with this population, such as pornography use and public policies.

Mitigating Vicarious Trauma in Professionals Addressing Sexual Violence

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others – Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself.

In Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way. Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices, drawn from modern psychology and a range of spiritual traditions, that enable us to look carefully at our reactions and motivations and discover new sources of energy and renewal.

Victim Advocate’s Guide to Wellness: Six Dimensions of Vicarious Trauma-Free Life – Olga Phoenix

Victim advocates work with the trauma of others on a daily basis. Helping people who suffer can be difficult, traumatic, and draining. Thousands of victim advocates struggle with depression, obesity, immune disorders, addiction, and anxiety—frequently the results of vicarious trauma. Fortunately, vicarious trauma is preventable. This book is your personal guide to living healthy and content while thriving in a trauma-related field.

Non-profit Administration and Professional Development

A Practical Guide to Reflective Supervision – Sherryl Scott Heller and Linda Gilkerson, eds.

Reflective supervision is hard-and it’s an even greater challenge when the same supervisor must provide both reflective and administrative supervision. The authors include a unique focus on this blended model of supervision. Reflective Supervision and Leadership in Infant and Early Childhood Programs illustrates the foundations and frameworks of reflective practice and outlines ways to support reflective supervision in a wide variety of work settings. Other highlights of the book are: A discussion of the roles of the reflective supervisor; knowledge and skills needed for reflective supervision; tips for providing group reflective supervision & vignettes outlining common supervisory dilemmas.

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior – Kerry Patterson et al

In this updated second edition (first edition titled “Crucial Confrontations”), you’ll learn how to hold anyone accountable, master performance discussions, and get results. Crucial Accountability teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand without harming the relationship—and, in fact, even strengthens it. The book offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life and for resolving all these problems—permanently.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High – Kerry Patterson et al

The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to: prepare for high-stakes situations; transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue; make it safe to talk about almost anything; and be persuasive, not abrasive.

Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times – Berit Lakey, George Lakey, Rod Napier, and Janice Robinson

Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership weaves together theory, experience, and context to help leaders deal creatively and concretely with the full range of organizations issues. A practical tool kit, it also clarifies the nature of power and leadership, the stages of social movements, and the social environment in which organizations exist.

Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager’s Guide to Getting Results – Alison Green and Jerry Hauser

A nonprofit manager’s fundamental job is to get results, sustained over time, rather than boost morale or promote staff development. This is a shift from the tenor of many management books, particularly in the nonprofit world. Managing to Change the World is designed to teach new and experienced nonprofit managers the fundamental skills of effective management, including: managing specific tasks and broader responsibilities; setting clear goals and holding people accountable to them; creating a results-oriented culture; hiring, developing, and retaining a staff of superstars.

Organizational Trauma and Healing – Pat Vivian and Shana Hormann

Organizational Trauma and Healing is the first book about organizational trauma using an organizational lens. Organizational trauma is pervasive across nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses. However, the phenomenon has received scant attention or been misidentified. Much work on organizational trauma ignores the systemic nature of traumatization and the insidious, negative consequences to organizations once trauma becomes embedded in organizational culture. In fact, organizational trauma and traumatization seriously harm organizations; impacts may be drastic and long lasting.

The Age of Overwhelm: Strategies for the Long Haul – Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

Whether we are overwhelmed by work or school; our families or communities; caretaking for others or ourselves; or engagement in social justice, environmental advocacy, or civil service, just a few subtle shifts can help sustain us. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, shows us how by offering concrete strategies to help us mitigate harm, cultivate our ability to be decent and equitable, and act with integrity. The Age of Overwhelm aims to help ease our burden of overwhelm, restore our perspective, and give us strength to navigate what is yet to come.

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