THE NEW NORMAL

Slovinsky discusses sexual trauma in this scholarly memoir.

The book traces the author’s journey from a childhood defined by an emotionally and physically abusive home life in rural Pennsylvania, through repeated sexual trauma in her adolescent and college years, and finally into the complexities of motherhood and decades of work as a victim advocate. Employing what she calls an autoethnographic approach, Slovinsky connects her personal history to the broader social patterns that shape how sexual violence happens, how institutions respond to it, and how survivors navigate both. The book moves chapter by chapter through the most taboo conversations about sexual violence, detailing certain experiences survivors know intimately but almost never see acknowledged in print, including the use of alcohol as a prerequisite to intimacy, the particular challenges of parenting when one’s own childhood lacked safety and affection, and the toll that vicarious trauma takes on professionals who work with survivors. The chapter on the shame that survivors often feel about having sexual fantasies is unflinchingly rendered: “To admit to actually fantasizing about abusive experiences is incredibly difficult…I rely on research to…understand the reasons why this behavior is common, and to reaffirm that I am not alone.” (Characteristically of Slovinsky’s method, the most uncomfortable material is also the most carefully researched.) Throughout the text, the author fluently integrates peer-reviewed research while reserving space for other survivors’ stories. The final chapters, covering post-traumatic resilience and hope, are among the most affecting in recent nonfiction about recovery. The book will resonate most immediately with survivors of sexual trauma, though its central argument—that trauma is far too common to be treated as exceptional—carries an urgency that makes it rewarding reading for anyone willing to look at how pervasively trauma survives in the body. Slovinsky’s dual roles as subject and author are both the book’s defining strength and, at moments, sources of slight tension—the scholarly apparatus occasionally blunts the memoir’s emotional current, but it never derails it.

Honest, rigorously researched, and hopeful, this book deserves a place on every survivor’s shelf.