Curated by Chloe Sparrow, Marriott Library and Corinne Casazza, Center for Campus Wellness

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. These seven books broadly cover the topic of intimate partner violence.

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

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In this book, he 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 that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity.

Educated
By Tara Westover

What My Bones Know
By Stephanie Foo

This book while not centered around domestic violence in the intimate partner sense, it is more connected to family violence/ abuse within the home, silence around it, and the struggles around culturally competent supports because of how domestic violence or abuse in the home is understood in other cultures, and it ties strongly into the theme of healing. Some themes in it are trauma responses heavily influenced by cultural socialization, shame in cultures, and healing practices that aren’t specific to what western healing covers.

In The Dream House
By Carmen Maria Machado

For years Carmen Maria Machado has struggled to articulate her experiences in an abusive same-sex relationship. In this extraordinarily candid and radically inventive memoir, Machado tackles a dark and difficult subject with wit, inventiveness and an inquiring spirit, as she uses a series of narrative tropes—including classic horror themes—to create an entirely unique piece of work which is destined to become an instant classic.

No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
By Rachel Louise Snyder

Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths: That if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; that violence inside the home is separate from other forms of violence like mass shootings, gang violence, and sexual assault.

Family Violence Across the Life Course: Research, Policy and Prevention 
By Sonia Salari

Intimate partner violence, family abuse, neglect and exploitation exist for persons of all ages, so it is imperative to recognize the special vulnerabilities of victims and patterns of perpetration from early to later life. This book offers a fresh look at the research, policy and prevention work from an ecological and life course perspective.

Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance
By Beverly Bell

Beverly Bell, an activist and an expert on Haitian social movements, brings together thirty-eight oral histories from a diverse group of Haitian women. Defying victim status despite gender- and state-based repression, they tell how Haiti’s poor and dispossessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival. The women’s powerfully moving accounts of horror and heroism can best be characterized by the Creole word istwa, which means both “story” and “history.”

Resources On Campus

Center for Campus Wellness’ Victim-Survivor Advocates

Counseling Center

Mental Health First Responders

Safe UT

Resources Off Campus

Huntsman Mental Health Institute

National Crisis Support Line: 988