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A moving, timely, and riveting memoir of intimate abuse, campus politics, and the narratives we choose to believe.
On a picturesque campus in the springtime, a young woman is shoved backwards down a concrete stairway by her partner. This follows months of slowly escalating violence. She ultimately ends the relationship, flees across the country, and initiates a Title IX case against him. She knows what she has experienced and survived: gaslighting, assault, manipulation, mortal threats. But others say, simply, that she hasn’t—and that her boyfriend is the real victim. Trained to interpret the past, she finds herself swept up in a struggle to define the truth about her life.
In this poignant self-investigation, historian and journalist Joy Neumeyer explores how violence against women is portrayed, perceived, and adjudicated today, decades after the inception of Title IX and in the immediate wake of MeToo. Interweaving the harrowing account of the abuse she experienced as a graduate student at Berkeley with those of others who faced violence, on campus and beyond, Neumeyer offers a startling look at how the hotly-debated Title IX system has altered university politics and culture, and uncovers the willful misremembrance that enables misconduct on scales large and small.
Deeply researched, daringly inquisitive, and resonant for our times, A Survivor's Education reveals the entanglement of storytelling, abuse, and power, and how we can balance narrative and evidence in our attempts to determine what “really” happened.
