Saving Five

Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope
By Amanda Nguyen
AUWA Books, 2025. 204 pages. Nonfiction

"A revelatory and powerful memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize finalist Amanda Nguyen, detailing her tumultuous childhood and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard in 2013." Amanda was determined to not let her rape derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, so she let her rape kit be filed under "Jane Doe." She was quickly horrified to learn that her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. 

She knew then that she had two clear options: surrender to a law that denied her justice, or fight for a change for herself and survivors everywhere. Amanda chose to fight to change the laws for sexual assault survivors, and placed her dream of being an astronaut on hold - but wrote herself a note that read, "Never, never give up," to remind her that this was only a pause, not a stop, on her way to space. On, Monday, April 14th, 2025, Amanda Nguyen became the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space and she carried with her the note she wrote for herself! The words "never, never give up" were her zero-G indicator; the object that astronauts bring to space to indicate when microgravity conditions begin. This is truly a memoir of hope and so, much more.

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Know My Name
By Chanel Miller
Viking, 2019. 357 pages. Nonfiction

A Stanford student had been sentenced to just six months in a county jail after he was found sexually assaulting "Emily Doe" on the school's campus. The victim's impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral, was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress. It inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Now, Chanel Miller reclaims her identity to tell the story of her trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. She reveals her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial, reveals the oppression that victims face in even the best-case scenarios, and illuminates a culture biased to protect the perpetrators.

Women We Buried, Women We Burned
By Rachel Louise Snyder

A piercing account of the author's journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of domestic violence, this memoir embodies the transformative power of resistance. Rachel Louise Snyder was just eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled rom school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually traveling the globe. You don't want to miss this remarkable and gut-wrenching story.

I Have the Right To
By Chessy Prout
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2018. 404 pages. Nonfiction

The numbers are staggering: nearly one in five girls ages fourteen to seventeen have been the victim of a sexual assault or an attempted sexual assault. This is the true story of one of those girls. In 2014, Chessy Prout was a freshman at St. Paul's School, a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire, when a senior boy sexually assaulted her as part of a ritualized game of conquest. She reported her assault to the police and testified against her attacker in court. In the face of unexpected backlash from her once-trusted school community, she shed her anonymity to help other survivors find their voice.

Denial: A Memoir of Terror
By Jessica Stern
Ecco Press, 2010. 300 pages. Nonfiction

When Jessica Stern was fifteen, she and her fourteen-year-old sister were raped, and the rapist was never caught. Forty years later, the case was reopened and the perpetrator, thought to have raped as many as forty-four girls between the ages of nine and nineteen, was identified. Though he had died several years earlier, Jessica felt the need to investigate him and, through her explorations, she found more than just a sense of who he was. She discovered explanations for her ability to maintain calm in moments of extreme danger, her tendency to experience enormous anxiety in nonthreatening situations and why she may have chosen her specific career path. Her book is a strong, clear-eyed study of the profound reverberations of trauma.

LKA