Because it is in first person, the reader directly sees the psychological impact of the abuse and comes to understand how the abuser manipulates the victim into cooperating in it. We see the psychological costs of being abused—denial, depression, mental splitting, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, alcohol abuse, hopelessness, shame, fear of harm to her family—but gradually we also experience Laila's struggle. Set in the context of Muslim society where the young female victim knows her word will not be believed in preference to that of her "good" Muslim father, the story could have happened anywhere. Yes, the details are shocking, but they are not prurient, as the negative reviews have suggested. They are sickening and saddening but they are real. The details serve to underline the horrible things that abusers do to kids. I learned much about how the relationship between abuser and victim works and why it is so hard for the victim to break away and recover. This story is all the more moving because it is true. It took great courage for Laila to expose her life in this way, even if she does use a pseudonym. Her opening explanation for why she wrote the book reveals her hope that at least one abused individual will read it and live a healthy, happy life after the horrific experiences of such a childhood.Synopsis: Not Easily Washed Away is the true story of a young girl who was born to a Muslim family in Pakistan. She suffered through sexual, mental and physical abuse for fifteen years, which was perpetrated by her father Abdulla. Laila decides to take advantage of her father’s incestuous addiction by having him acquire a visa for her to the United States, where she feels as if she can rid herself of a putrid past. The book is written from a psychological perspective in first person, as Laila shares her painful past with the reader, sparing no details of her ordeal as a child, teenager and young adult. After she realizes her father’s diabolical plan is to keep her in Pakistan for himself, Laila decides to take fate into her own hands. Her new attitude helps her to turn the tables on her father, now living in America, and manipulate him into marrying an American woman to get Laila’s visa to the United States.The United States is not the instantaneous answer to Laila's plight. She arrived in Seattle, Washington, in 2004 to start a new life away from her father, but ends up being unable to stop the incestuous relationship with him and later on, with her stepmother. Things get even worse for Laila, as she is now twenty years old, depressed, and worried that her family’s fate back in Pakistan might be jeopardized if she leaves home. In the Spring of 2007 Laila’s life changes when her younger sister arrived from Pakistan and when she meets an interesting, Christian, Jamaican man at school. The young man confronts Laila about the abuse, and when she realizes she has feelings for him, she tells him everything. The young man tries to convince Laila that she can become mentally stronger and free herself of her abusive father and stepmother by running away with him.

    The first collection of its kind, Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics to offer new ways for understanding how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. Through a politic of gender self-determination, this collection argues that trans/queer liberation and prison abolition must be grown together. From rioting against police violence and critiquing hate crimes legislation to prisoners demanding access to HIV medications, and far beyond, Captive Genders is a challenge for us all to join the struggle."An exciting assemblage of writings—analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews—that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity.... [T]he contributors to this volume create new frameworks and new vocabularies that surely will have a transformative impact on the theories and practices of twenty-first century abolition."—Angela Y. Davis, professor emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz"The purpose of prison abolition is to discover and promote the countless ways freedom and difference are mutually dependent. The contributors to Captive Genders brilliantly shatter the assumption that the antidote to danger is human sacrifice."—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California"Captive Genders is at once a scathing and necessary analysis of the prison industrial complex and a history of queer resistance to state tyranny. By queering a prison abolition analysis, Captive Genders moves us to imagine the impossible dream of liberation."—Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of So Many Ways to Sleep BadlyEric A. Stanley is a radical queer activist, outlaw academic, and experimental filmmaker.Nat Smith is a member of Trans/gender Variant in Prison Committee and is an organizer with Critical Resistance.

    In desperation, he agreed to smuggle cocaine out of Venezuela. Almost inevitably, he and his girlfriend, Sam, were caught.The price they paid was a ten-year sentence in the hell of the overcrowded Venezuelan prison system, notorious for official corruption and abuse, and rife with weapons and gangs. At one point, Frank was held in the remote El Dorado prison, better known for being the one-time home of Henri Charrière, or Papillon. He witnessed countless murders as gang leaders fought for power, and he had to become as ruthless as his fellow inmates in order to survive. In an attempt to dull the reality of the horrendous conditions, he succumbed to drugs.After enduring years of systematic beatings by the guards and attempts on his life by inmates, Frank suffered more than one breakdown. He lost over four stone and was riddled with disease, but somehow he found the strength within himself to survive and was eventually released in 2004 after serving over seven years of his sentence. During the long walk back from hell, Frank decided to tell his story.

    There’s also a very public suicide attempt while another prisoner creates a prison-wide panic that involves hundreds.It’s all just another month inside the walls of maximum-security, guaranteed to draw you in. This isn’t your ordinary 9 to 5.

    Born and raised in Somalia, she yearns to be loved and free in a world far away and nothing like her own. But living under the roof of her overprotective strict parents, she knows that what she wants is nothing more than a dream, and it could never be her reality. That is until her forbidden love interest, Shadi, an older man who she's grown to love and trust, promises to give her everything she’s hoped for and more. After an incident with her father goes too far, Shadi vows to protect Fallon and give her her heart’s desire if she agrees to run off to America with him. Thinking that the perfect life awaits her, she agrees with little hesitation, but what happens the second her feet land on the pavement in NYC is something she never expected. Being abandoned by the man she loves, Fallon is thrown in to the harsh world of drugs and sex trafficking. Her instincts jolt her into survival mode, and she has every intention of beating the odds and escaping with her life. Wali is the savage king of the concrete jungle who commands respect with his presence alone. To the world, he’s a ruthless thug with no heart, but raising his younger sister Yaya by himself, he develops a soft side that only a select few get to see. When fate brings him to Fallon, something about her piques his interest and he wants nothing more than to get to know the girl behind the sad eyes. When something tragic happens to someone he loves, Fallon becomes a distant memory, and Wali is on a mission to destroy and conquer. Join Fallon and Wali as they try to survive the mean streets of New York and the hand that they’ve been dealt. Find out if Wali can be Fallon’s knight in shining armor or will she end up having to be his?

    When officers discovered Maddie chained to a table and competing with dogs for food, they asked the young girl her name....You could never guess her reply!

    She doesn’t care what everyone else says. She knows he loves her because she is certain he has remained faithful to her. Geoffrey is very handsome and arrogant enough to know other women would want him but in the three years of their marriage there hasn’t been the slightest hint of an affair. Mary happily puts up with the humiliation, the sexual demands and the beating, safe in the knowledge Geoffrey truly loves her. And he is always so sorry each time she makes one of her little trips to the hospital. She knows it is her fault really. If only she could learn to be a better wife, things would be easier for her. But Geoffrey has more than one secret and when they begin to unravel Mary is forced to reassess everything she thought to be true. She learns even she has power, the power to say, No!

    Some came to him in sleep while others seemed to appear at random through his musings. He had time traveled, in a way, to a place where the darkness of his abusive childhood occurred and alongside, also came the dark and sometimes painful reflections.They are real and raw; emotionally explicit and even occasionally, healing. Walk with him through his poetic journey as he takes you to those tiny cracks that most of us will never see.Note: Please take special care that the writings in this book may be explicit in nature. If you have been abused in any way they may be triggering for you. Be considerate to yourself while you read.

    Nor is it Martin Bryant, the man responsible for claiming 35 lives in the Port Arthur massacre. No, the person in Australia controversially ruled 'too dangerous to be released', the one who needs chains, leather restraints and a full-time posse of guards is Rebecca Butterfield: a self-mutilating murderer, infamous for slicing guards and stabbing another inmate 33 times.But Butterfield is not alone. There's cannibal killer Katherine Knight, jilted man-murderer Kathy Yeo, jailbreak artist Lucy Dudko, and a host of others who will greet you inside the gates of Australia's hardest women's jails. You will meet drug dealers, rapists and fallen celebrities. You will hear tales of forbidden love, drug parties gone wrong and guards who trade 40-cent phone calls for sex. All will be revealed in Green Is the New Black, a comprehensive account of women's prison life by award-winning author and journalist James Phelps.

    Jackie Walters hasn’t seen. And now, in her new book, the widely-adored OB-GYN invites you to put your feet in the stirrups and investigate. Whether she’s covering libido, contraceptives, labiaplasty, or fertility, Dr. Jackie educates readers with her characteristic grace and pragmatism. Both funny and informative, she brings you on a quest through the female reproductive system—answering all the burning (and itching, and smelling…) questions you’ve always been afraid to ask.Dr. Jackie knows that every woman is different, and she’s designed a reading experience that’s tailor-made for each individual. After taking a fun quiz to uncover your own vaginal personality (V.P.), you'll embark upon an eye-opening journey of self-discovery. Are you a Mary Jane, a Sanctified Snatch, or a Notorious V.A.G.? What’s the shape of your vaginal flower—rosebud, tulip, or carnation? Dr. Jackie reveals the answer and doles out advice so personal you’ll feel like you’re in the office talking to her.For every time you've been draped in a paper gown and too embarrassed to ask that question, Dr. Jackie has you covered. Her book is a woman's guide to self-awareness that will educate, entertain, and empower others to achieve vaginal liberation. It's a must-read for anyone who owns (or loves) a vagina.

    Keonshay Collins knows that feeling all too well. Being the second born child of eight, she knows that she doesn’t have to experience failure to learn a lesson. Her mother continuously shovels her responsibilities of child rearing onto Keonshay, despite the fact that she’s only a twenty year old college student. Learning to navigate through those difficulties, Keonshay has taken the responsibility to raise her younger siblings, teaching them how to be respectable and responsible. Just when things begin to really fall apart, Keonshay is approached by her crush, who leaves her reeling with emotion. As Kace tries to come on strong, she continues to pull away, embarrassed about her current struggles. Some people seem to have it all. That is the perception people got when they looked at Kace Moses. He’s good-looking, smart, wealthy, and can shimmy like no other at the Kappa step shows. Following his parents’ guidance has been engrained in him. He knows what he wants out of life but hasn’t quite found who he wanted to be the love of it, until he sees Keonshay. Observing her for months, he decides to approach her. That same day he realizes that he has taken on a lot, but his heart refuses to let him move on without her. Through life’s challenges, Keon and Kace struggle to conquer every obstacle thrown their way. While in their hearts they feel they would do any and everything for love, will there ever come a time when enough is enough? Will they have the strength to hold on to their destinies or will the love and preservation of others in their lives pull them apart?

    Grab a copy now and rediscover your view to see life.

    We often hear cases where people are molested but we hear nothing of the journey after. The breakdowns, the fear, the struggle and the courage it takes to decide whether to let yourself wither or continue to bloom despite the scars.This book is the author’s brave journey when she resorted to writing as a coping mechanism for her trauma. It’s all her thoughts – anything and everything. She chose not to drown in the pit of darkness.Every word is a feeling and a step closer to overcoming the trauma, so to once again live life with a smile. Take what you must from this book and join in the journey to seek happiness once again.

    Author Gene Gurney takes the reader from the superplane’s inception, test flights and production to its combat deployments and its ultimate purpose of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    And when this baby’s father finally made it to the hospital from the bar room to see his new baby daughter. Did he pick her up and while looking into her innocent newborn eyes say, "I'm not going to feed you, because I don't care if you starve,” or did he say, "someday, when you need emergency medical treatment, I'm going to beat you for getting sick, throw you on the couch and leave you there alone for days- without food, water, or medicine," or did he say... Susan and her two sisters grew up in a time when racism was the norm, child abuse wasn’t recognized and poverty was a way of life. Throughout her life she was often beaten, forced to be a servant and was tossed away like garbage. Susan knew she wanted better out of life...an education, a chance to succeed, to have a mind of her own and most of all...to be free-free from abuse, neglect, prejudice and hatred. This is an inspiring story about a little girl’s struggle to overcome many obstacles- to understand why she was hurt, both physically and mentally, by the very people that were supposed to love and nurture her. And through it all she never lost faith or hope that one day she would succeed-against all odds.“Never look down on anyone, unless you’re helping them up”Jesse Jackson