Broken: Women’s Stories of Intimate and Institutional Harm and Repair Volume 12

In the United States, the second-wave feminist fight to achieve legal and societal recognition of men’s violence against women leaned heavily on the victim-offender binary, which has since become inscribed in funding schemes, legal remedies, and intervention approaches. In Broken, scholar-practitioner Lisa Young Larance draws on her extensive in-depth qualitative inquiry and practice experience with women who have participated in antiviolence intervention to explain how this binary erases the trauma histories of those who both survive and cause harm. Calling for a more holistic conception of interpersonal violence, Broken illuminates the connections across race, class, and sexual orientation that facilitate women’s healing and repair.

Lisa Young Larance is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Bryn Mawr College’s Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. She cocreated the Vista program, one of the first antiviolence intervention programs in the United States for women who use force in intimate relationships.