Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir - Hardcover

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of The Glass Eye: A Memoir (Tin House Books, 2017). Her work has appeared in The Believer, the New York Times Modern Love, Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor at Towson University.

“Vanasco's second memoir sets the canon of #MeToo-era creative nonfiction on fire: she interviews her rapist. ... This is a slow-burning, reverberating meditation on the nuances of morality, masculinity, and punishment. ... Inimitable. (Starred Review)”
- Booklist

“Vanasco invites her readers to understand the complicated humanity involved in both causing and experiencing harm, leaving the limits and possibilities of accountability and healing as urgent, open questions. An extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection. (Starred Review)”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Vanasco gets at so many of the gray areas in our conversations about rape and the rehabilitation of its perpetrators. If some traumas don't fit into neat little narratives, then the pleasure of reading Vanasco is in knowing that messiness is OK, that there's no right way to handle such betrayals.”
- Maris Kreizman, Pacific Standard

“A firecracker of a book.”
- Bustle

“Thought-provoking, unmooring, and haunting.”
- NYLON

“Clearly this is an important and timely book. Even in a world that can seem brimming with stories similar to Vanasco’s, hers stands out . . . heartfelt, painful, and essential.”
- Shelf Awareness

“Jeannie Vanasco has written exactly the book we need right now. I wish everyone in this country would read it.”
- Melissa Febos, author of ABANDON ME

“Vanasco performs a literary feminist miracle for all women who have been denied basic rights, been suspect, been labeled, been unbelievable after their rapes and assaults, and shines our collective shame outwardly, to ask a man why a choice to abuse is made.”
- Sophia Shalmiyev, author of MOTHER WINTER

“Vanasco is a brilliant craftsperson―blurring the lines between memoir, investigation, and interview, she confronts her years-ago rapist and dives headlong into the complexity of forgiveness and redemption, what was taken and what can be rebuilt. Our cultural discussion of rape is so deeply marked by silence. Enough with the silence. Enough. Vanasco has given us a bridge.”
- Megan Stielstra, author of THE WRONG WAY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE

“Carrying memories of rape sometimes feels like working, day in and day out, on untangling a hopelessly knotted chain. In this book, Jeannie Vanasco works through the gnarl until its terrifying expanse is stretched out before us. There is so much power in these pages: in the vulnerability she shows in seeking answers, in the deftness with which she builds a narrative where there was once only a mess of questions and silence.”
- Elissa Washuta, author of STARVATION MODE