About
In the gripping first pages of this true story, Jana Leo relives the moment-by-moment experience of a home invasion and rape in her own apartment in Harlem. After she reports the crime, she waits. Between police disinterest and squabbles from the health insurance company over who's going to pay for the rape kit, she realizes that the violence of such an experience does not stop with the crime. Increasingly concerned that the rapist will return, she seeks help from her landlord, who refuses to address security issues on the property. She comes to understand that it is precisely these conditions of newly gentrified lower-income areas which lead to vulnerable living spaces, high turnover rates, and ultimately higher profits for slumlords. In this most singular memoir, Leo weaves a psychological journey into an analysis that becomes equally personal: the fault lines of property mismanagement, class vulnerabilities, and a deeply flawed criminal justice system. In a stunning conclusion, Leo has her day in court.
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Reviews
"At times recalling Joan Didion's Sentimental Journeys, Leo's book is an intensely vulnerable and honest attempt to correct many of the false perceptions associated with rape."
Publishers Weekly
"With writing that is both contained and effusive, Leo seamlessly transitions between a visceral, experiential understanding of rape to the probing intellectual analysis of an academic. . . . It is the juxtaposition of the personal and the political--and the notion that they are really one and the same--that gives Leo's story incredible impact. . . . Ultimately, she forces readers to confront unco
Bookslut
"Jana Leo's Rape New York refractures and reconstructs the story of her rape and its aftermath; in re-presenting the constellation of events that lead to and from that attack, Leo represents life in all its random brutality and orchestrated dignity--in other words, the best that can be said about this book is that it is true, which is the only real measure of real art, and honest existence."
Vanessa Place, author of The Guilt Project