One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

Karyn L Freedman

ISBN 10: 022607370X / ISBN 13: 9780226073705

Published by The University of Chicago Press, 2014

About this Item

Through frank discussions of sex and intimacy, the author explores the consequence of sexual violence on love and relationships, and she illustrates the steep personal cost of sexual violence and the obstacles faced by individual survivors in its aftermath.

Seller Inventory # CIN022607370XVG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022607370X
• ISBN 13: 9780226073705
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

In this powerful memoir, philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. One Hour in Paris takes the reader on a harrowing yet inspirational journey through suffering and recovery both personal and global. We follow Freedman from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, then from a trauma center in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. At a time when as many as one in three women in the world have been victims of sexual assault and when many women are still ashamed to come forward, Freedman’s book is a moving and essential look at how survivors cope and persevere.

At once deeply intimate and terrifyingly universal, One Hour in Paris weaves together Freedman’s personal experience with the latest philosophical, neuroscientific, and psychological insights on what it means to live in a body that has been traumatized. Using her background as a philosopher, she looks at the history of psychological trauma and draws on recent theories of posttraumatic stress disorder and neuroplasticity to show how recovery from horrific experiences is possible. Through frank discussions of sex and intimacy, she explores the consequences of sexual violence for love and relationships, and she illustrates the steep personal cost of sexual violence and the obstacles faced by individual survivors in its aftermath. Freedman’s book is an urgent call to face this fundamental social problem head-on, arguing that we cannot continue to ignore the fact that sexual violence against women is rooted in gender inequalities that exist worldwide―and must be addressed.

One Hour in Paris is essential reading for survivors of sexual violence as well as an invaluable resource for therapists, mental health professionals, and family members and friends of victims.

About the Author

Karyn L. Freedman lives in Toronto, Canada, and she is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph.