Survivor Injustice: State-Sanctioned Abuse, Domestic Violence, and the Fight for Bodily Autonomy
Description
Journalist and Jezebel staff writer Kylie Cheung exposes the insidious--and often unseen--connections among domestic abuse, state-based violence, political disenfranchisement, and the carceral state.
"An astonishingly original, powerfully honest vision for true survivor justice." —Kirkus, starred review
For readers of The Revolution Starts at Home, Feminism for the 99%, and Good and Mad.
Incisive, urgent, and written exactly for our post-Roe times, Survivor Injustice is the feminist frame-changing read we need now--for each of us, and for all that’s at stake.
With an abolitionist lens, journalist and Jezebel staff writer Kylie Cheung shows how domestic abuse and state violence are systemic and interconnected. She shatters the harmful and convenient narrative that abuse is a “private matter” perpetrated by individual bad actors--and situates popular understandings of domestic abuse in an indictment of the racism, misogyny, and carcerality baked into U.S. culture and politics. Cheung explores:
- The links between capitalism and domestic abuse: how late-stage capitalism colludes with the state to incentivize forced birth and reproductive coercion
- Intimate partner violence as a tool of political silence and social control
- America’s tacit acceptance of sexual assault, from the home to the White House
- The interplay of race, power, gender, and sexuality in state-based violence
- How the United States runs on carcerality, and what that means for victims
- The way we view survival crimes, and our complicity in defining which acts are “violent” and whose actions are “criminal”
- How white feminism and carceral feminism fail us all
Cheung plainly names all that goes unsaid when we, as a culture, talk about abuse: How state and society criminalize women, girls, and gender-oppressed people of color. That what happens behind closed doors affects whose voices we hear at the ballot box. What it means when we put predators--from every party--up for vote. That sex workers are more likely to be victimized by law enforcement than “saved” by them. That this is all by design. And that ultimately--with organizing, abolition, and beyond-the-ballot action--we can change it all for good.
Praise for Survivor Injustice: State-Sanctioned Abuse, Domestic Violence, and the Fight for Bodily Autonomy
“By identifying rape culture’s political, systemic roots—omnipresent regardless of political affiliation—Cheung provides the anticapitalist analysis lost when the mainstreaming of #MeToo led to a whitewashed movement.”
—Lexi McMenamin, news and politics editor at Teen Vogue
“Cheung skillfully dissolves the veil between the personal and political ... and the result is shattering, even for those who are deeply familiar with these issues. This is an urgent read.”
—Becca Andrews, author of No Choice
“A must-read analysis of the devastating impact gender-based violence plays in upholding white
male supremacy.”
—Robin Marty, author of Handbook for a Post-Roe America
“Cheung exposes how domestic abuse and sexual violence targeting women of Asian descent is
frequently overlooked, downplayed, and rendered invisible. A compelling and important book for these times.”
—Michele Goodwin, author of Policing the Womb, host of Ms. magazine’s On the Issues podcast, and Chancellor’s Professor at UC Irvine School of Law
“Survivor Injustice is beautifully threaded with Kylie Cheung’s lived experience, depth of knowledge, and expertise. Kylie creates an easy-to-follow roadmap, helping readers to understand how we got here and where we’re going. This book could not be more timely and powerful. As a survivor, I felt so seen and held in Kylie’s words. If you are a survivor yourself, or you love a survivor, this book is for you.”
—Alison Turkos, survivor-activist
“Survivor Injustice connects the dots between gender violence—both inter-personal and structural—and urgent threats to American democracy. Drawing on her years of reporting and her personal experiences, Cheung is an expert yet accessible and engaging guide through complex terrain.”
–Alexandra Brodsky, cofounder of Know Your IX and author of Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash
“An essential commentary on how American capitalism, the carceral system, voter suppression, and white supremacy entangle themselves in service of maintaining power and control over women, and in particular women and gender-expansive people of color. At once incisive and devastating, personal and communal, this book lays a foundation for a future in which our collective survival is not bound up with the very systems that exploit, pathologize, and denigrate our experiences and identities but is rather led by a vision of justice that values and honors the complexities, subtleties, and nonlinearity of survivors’ lives and truths.”
—Dana Sussman, deputy director of PregnancyJustice
“Kylie Cheung is at the height of her powers with Survivor Injustice. By turns personal and political, journalist and Gen Z feminist Cheung expertly and persuasively draws the connections between domestic abuse and state-based violence, interrogates the white-washing of Asian American women and girls from the conversation about victimhood, and reveals the ways we as a society criminalize people of color and women and girls. This is an urgent, must-read call to action.”
—Kera Bolonik, editor in chief of DAME magazine and author of the forthcoming book Gullible
