Saving Five: A Memoir Of Hope

Description

This is a powerful and innovative memoir by Nobel Peace Prize nominee and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen. The book chronicles her journey after being raped while a student at Harvard in 2013. When she discovered that her “Jane Doe” rape kit would be destroyed by the state after only six months—effectively erasing her chance for justice—she refused to stay silent.

The narrative is uniquely structured: it braids her real-life activism (which led to the unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act) with an imaginative, poetic conversation between her current self and her younger selves at ages five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty. It is a story of reclaiming one’s narrative, the pursuit of justice, and the resilience required to become an astronaut while healing from trauma.