Storying Domestic Violence

This book draws on interviews carried out over a period of eight years, as well as novels, films, and domestic violence literature, to explain the role of storytelling in the history of the battered women’s movement. The author shows how cultural contexts shape how stories about domestic abuse get told, and offers critical tools for bringing psychology into discussions of group dynamics in the domestic violence field. The book enlists psychoanalytic-feminist theory to analyse storytelling practices and to re-visit four areas of tension in the movement where signs of battle fatigue have been most acute. These areas include the conflicts that emerge between the battered women’s movement and the state, the complex relationship between domestic violence and other social problems, and the question of whether woman battering is a special case that differs from other forms of social violence. The volume also looks at the tensions between groups of women within the movement, and how to address differences based on race, class or other dimensions of power. Finally, the book explores the contentious issue of how to acknowledge forms of female aggression while still preserving a gender analysis of intimate partner violence. In attending to narrative dynamics in the history of domestic violence work, Hard Knocks presents a radical re-reading of the contribution of psychology to feminist interventions and activism. The book is ideal reading for scholars, activists, advocates and policy planners involved in domestic violence, and is suitable for students of psychology, social work, sociology and criminology.

"Stunning . . . . This is an immensely courageous story that will break your heart, leave you in tears, and, finally, offer hope and redemption. Brava, Kelly Sundberg." —Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder In this brave and beautiful memoir, written with the raw honesty and devastating openness of The Glass Castle and The Liar’s Club, a woman chronicles how her marriage devolved from a love story into a shocking tale of abuse—examining the tenderness and violence entwined in the relationship, why she endured years of physical and emotional pain, and how she eventually broke free. "You made me hit you in the face," he said mournfully. "Now everyone is going to know." "I know," I said. "I’m sorry." Kelly Sundberg’s husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships. To understand herself and her violent marriage, Sundberg looks to her childhood in Salmon, a small, isolated mountain community known as the most redneck town in Idaho. Like her marriage, Salmon is a place of deep contradictions, where Mormon ranchers and hippie back-to-landers live side-by-side; a place of magical beauty riven by secret brutality; a place that takes pride in its individualism and rugged self-sufficiency, yet is beholden to church and communal standards at all costs. Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary, and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman’s transformation as she gradually rejects the painful reality of her violent life at the hands of the man who is supposed to cherish her, begins to accept responsibility for herself, and learns to believe that she deserves better.

This is my story. I was brought up in Thailand in the old-fashioned way. My father was strict, my sisters and I were not allowed out after 18:00. We were not allowed to have a boyfriend until we finished university. My father was abusive to my mother, and on a lesser scale, to my sisters and me.Because of this, not long after finishing University, I moved to Bangkok for work and stayed with my eldest sister. While working in a Bangkok hotel, I met a wealthy Scottish businessman. He persuaded me to visit him in Scotland. We married, I had a wonderful, successful husband, a lovely home, it seemed I had all I could wish for. But, after our first child, he became secretive, controlling me and the children. He subjected me to physical and sexual violence. I was trapped in an abusive marriage for twenty years.At first, I thought I had no choice other than to suffer it, because I had seen my father abuse my mother. She tolerated it because there is little recourse for abused women in Thailand. Our culture and religion mean that you marry for life, unless your husband wishes to divorce you, in which case, women often end up homeless. With help from my friends and support organisations, I came to understand that I did not have to put up with violence and abuse. However, leaving was not easy, my ex-husband refused to divorce me, threatened to kill me, alienated me from my children, and employed people to follow me and record my telephone conversations. I ended up suicidal and homeless.During the divorce process, he concealed his assets, used extortion against me, and constantly submitted false allegations to delay family court action.I did not let this break me, I let go and moved on. My story is one of hope, there is always help out there.

Globally, at least one in four women experiences domestic violence at some point in her life, according to World Bank figures, which are confirmed by local surveys throughout the world. Since domestic violence can cause both acute physical injuries and long-term chronic illness, an abused woman is likely to appeal to a family doctor or general practitioner as one of her first resources for help. General practitioners, however, rarely report domestic violence in their practices. Jarmila Mildorf's interdisciplinary study makes a unique contribution to the fields of domestic abuse and narrative studies with her analysis of the narrative practices of doctors who treat abused women. Mildorf, a sociolinguist and literary scholar, analyzes the narrative trajectories, space-time parameters, agency, modalities, metaphors, and stereotypes in thirty-six narratives deriving from in-depth interviews with twenty general practitioners in Aberdeen, Scotland. Mildorf shows what these narrative strategies reveal about the perceptions and attitudes of practitioners toward domestic violence and the ways in which the narratives linguistically reconstruct knowledge and realities of domestic violence. Unique in its emphasis on the discourse of doctors, Storying Domestic Violence suggests the possibility of narrative approaches in medical modules that might preclude further stigmatization and victimization of abused women. A cross section of scholars will recognize this study as significant for its potential to change how people think about domestic abuse, physician-patient relations, and public health policy. Jarmila Mildorf is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Paderborn in Germany. She is a coeditor of Magic, Science, Technology and Literature, published in Germany.

In this gripping, compulsively readable story of romantic love and its dreadful underside (Susan Cheever), "Crazy Love" recounts Steiner's experiences as an abused wife--and how she found the courage to leave.

These Are Our Stories is a collection of women's stories, thoughts, and poems about the domestic abuse they have experienced throughout their lives. Transcribed directly from Jan Rosenberg's interviews with eleven women in the Florida panhandle, their histories embody the epidemic of domestic violence in America. The eleven survivors are lower to middle class women of various ethnic orientations, and range in age from their late twenties to mid-sixties. The survivors' stories are clarified with the use of diagrams from The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), and examined as the women re-build their lives hours and days at a time. These Are Our Stories provides two resource guides following the women's interviews. The first guide is adapted for use in north Florida to assist an abused woman in identifying her situation using these eleven women's stories as a thread. The second resource is a brief bibliography of literature and resources for domestic violence victims that can be used throughout the U.S.

Papa loves little Orsa -- but sometimes it's hard to tell. It seems to Orsa Bear that Papa is angry all the time -- especially after he's had a lot of jack-berry wine. If Papa's not yelling at Mama about the weeds in their garden, he's roaring at Orsa for being clumsy at his chores. Orsa is scared and doesn't understand why his father acts this way. After a long winter's sleep things get worse, but with the help of Dr. Owl, Mama and Orsa bravely take steps to break the cycle of violence. Told in an easy-to-read graphic narrative format, Hear My Roar provides a gentle, non-threatening approach to talking with children about family violence. The foreword and afterword help parents, teachers and caregivers use the story with young readers. This edition of Hear My Roar was adapted from the first edition by Dr. Ty Hochban, who has conducted extensive research in child developmental psychology and the effects of family violence.

Sharing Our Stories of Survival is a comprehensive treatment of the socio-legal issues that arise in the context of violence against native women--written by social scientists, writers, poets, and survivors of violence.

Domestic abuse is a national emergency: one in four Australian women has experienced violence from a man she was intimate with. But too often we ask the wrong question: why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: why did he do it? Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators – and the systems that enable them – in the spotlight. See What You Made Me Do is a deep dive into the abuse so many women and children experience – abuse that is often reinforced by the justice system they trust to protect them. Critically, it shows that we can drastically reduce domestic violence – not in generations to come, but today. Combining forensic research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do radically rethinks how to confront the national crisis of fear and abuse in our homes. ‘A shattering book: clear-headed and meticulous, driving always at the truth’—Helen Garner ‘One Australian a week is dying as a result of domestic abuse. If that was terrorism, we’d have armed guards on every corner.’ —Jimmy Barnes ‘Confronting in its honesty this book challenges you to keep reading no matter how uncomfortable it is to face the profound rawness of people’s stories. Such a well written book and so well researched. See What You Made Me Do sheds new light on this complex issue that affects so many of us.’—Rosie Batty

Starr and her little brother Tyler hide under the bed when her father gets upset and becomes violent--until their mother takes them to a shelter.