Publishers Weekly
05/20/2019
Scholar Freitas (Consent on Campus: A Manifesto) delivers a probing and painful account of being stalked by her graduate school mentor and the professional and emotional consequences it has had in the intervening 20 years. Because her mentor was a priest, an older professor, and an important figure in her field, Freitas couldn’t avoid Father L.’s “sustained unwanted attention,” even when he called daily, sent stacks of mail to her home and work, and creepily ingratiated himself with her ill mother. She lays bare in vivid scenes and complex reflections the overriding shame, confusion, and fear she felt as a productive professional relationship turned personal, then to persecution. Freitas’s narrative illustrates how self-doubt, denial, and self-blame can silence victims—she suffered for over a year before finally asking for help at her university (only to be paid off as a “nuisance” when she filed a formal complaint)—and affect them long-term (she continues to blame herself even in these pages, writing, “I did want the attention from my professor that I got in the beginning.... That was my crime.... I will blame myself forever for these initial, intimate offerings that I brought to him”). Freitas’s delicate study of her torment and its devastating effects, which raises thorny, meaningful questions about how to define consent, is an important testament for the #MeToo era. Agent: Miriam Altshuler, DeFiore and Company. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"Freitas recounts with great thoughtfulness how her perception of the power differential between [herself and her stalker], as well as her faith in the religious and educational institutions she'd grown up with, lulled her into susceptibility and disbelief."—New York Times Book Review
"Donna Freitas combs through the emotional knots that form when a mentor's attention becomes inappropriate and manipulative. With sharp attention, she separates the many strands of consent one by one. A riveting, significant examination of the forces that push a student into silence about unwanted attention."—Idra Novey, award-winning author of Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear
"A meticulously recounted memoir of building dread, that pushes our understanding of power and its abuses. Freitas's story complicates and illuminates our ideas about harassment and harm, showing how it doesn't just begin and end within the confines of physical contact: it infiltrates our own heads, is enabled by the very structures that are supposed to be our recourse from it but too often work to cover it up."—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad
"In Consent, Donna Freitas writes an experience many women know all too well: Being stalked. What makes this book is uniquely powerful is Freitas's particular expertise in this area: She is a scholar and speaker on issues of consent, religion, Title IX, and sex on college campuses."—Bustle
"A groundbreaking resource for educators, administrators, students, and survivors, the book explores an issue many would prefer to ignore.A potent memoir of stalking with special resonance in the era of #MeToo.—Kirkus, starred review
"Any reader interested in current discussions
on consent and its importance should pick up this heartfelt and harrowing book."—Library Journal, starred review
"Freitas is incredibly honest and doesn't shy away from her feelings that she is in some way at fault. She rounds out her memories with details of her family and friends as well as more studious synthesis, and calls for campus reform, adding heft to an already important story."—Booklist
"Freitas has mastered the telling of her story—despite repeated attempts by others to keep her from doing so—and has mastered it in such a way that its telling sheds light on a larger societal issue. . . . A difficult but important read about one woman's survival of stalking by her professor, and the role of consent in any relationship."—Shelf Awareness
"Freitas' delicate study of her torment and its devastating effects, which raises thorny, meaningful questions about how to define consent, is an important testament for the #MeToo era."—Publisher's Weekly
"Consent is an affecting memoir."—The Wall Street Journal
Praise for The End of Sex
"A straight-forward, well-researched, and eye-opening book.... This compelling testimony from young people around the country provides ample evidence for why this campus lifestyle should not be ignored."-Boston Globe
"Freitas provides compelling evidence that far too many young adults live lives of quiet desperation-sexually and socially...The End of Sex paints a vivid portrait of hookup culture...There is much in The End of Sex to applaud."-Christianity Today
"The book is informative, non-judgmental and a must-read for parents and for their university-aged kids.'"-Toronto Star
"Freitas recalls this time in herself with stark clarity, honesty, and a vulnerability that bleeds onto the page."—Bitch Media
Kirkus Reviews
2019-05-12
The acclaimed writer and campus lecturer shares a secret, revealing a story of stalking lurking just beneath her success.
In her latest, Freitas (Consent on Campus: A Manifesto, 2018, etc.) exposes the psychological havoc caused by her stalker and navigates the complex terrain of structural sexism and double standards involved with trusting in authority, academia, and the Catholic church. Silenced first by self-doubt and later by confidentiality agreements, the author provides a harrowing narrative of the detachment and disconnection often felt by harassment survivors. In her painstaking account, imbued throughout with alternating senses of self-awareness and -doubt, Freitas reviews her choices as if constantly scanning for fault or responsibility even as she unfolds the layers of lies that protected an influential professor. Her smooth storytelling skills translate this nightmare to the page with emotionally wrought insights. "If I named this thing it would stick to me, sink into me, become me," she writes. "Not only would it rot me from the inside but now the rot would be visible. It would cling to me, mark me, become my scarlet letter." Whether caught in a monster's trap or the victim of a foolish old man's misguided and inappropriate affections, Freitas manages to refrain from judgment without shielding her discomfort with either option. She discusses life after a trauma as a victim and survivor while delivering an unforgettable analysis of a devastating ordeal. As she interrogates womanhood, professional success, and expectations about protection when such behavior is reported, the author's attention to the institutional response in light of current trends makes this an urgently vital perspective. Her excavations of victim-blaming and institution-protection actions are stark, and her sharing of this long-silenced story adds to the current social reckoning with unequal power dynamics on college campuses and elsewhere. A groundbreaking resource for educators, administrators, students, and survivors, the book explores an issue many would prefer to ignore.
A potent memoir of stalking with special resonance in the era of #MeToo.
