Ginger Price was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin and did not understand the basic mechanics of sex. In addition to abstaining from spreading her legs, Ginger avoided coffee, tea, and alcohol like the good Mormon girl she was raised to be. She believed that by avoiding these things, she was honoring God and in turn, God would protect her from the fiery darts of Satan and the human evils of the world.

My Dear Rapist is a collection of 43 letters to Ginger’s rapist that illustrate how a sheltered upbringing in Mormonism led to a woman’s worst nightmare. Through her letters, Ginger humanizes herself to her rapist while chronicling the growth and transformation that came from battling misogyny and shame that is so easily found within a patriarchal, high-demand religion. Ginger’s narrative exposes a vital need for open-minded, safe, and healthy conversations surrounding sex so that women can make better-informed decisions about their sex lives and be kept safe from gender-based violence.

My Dear Rapist adds to the ongoing cultural conversations about what is sexual trauma and abuse and highlights how the cages of misogyny oppress women, keeping them silent and tamed within phallocentric, subscribed gender roles. Ginger’s audience of 40 million people who have left a high-demand religion in the last 25 years, and the millions of victims and survivors who have endured rape and sexual assault will find empowerment in Ginger’s story as they switch the narrative and stake the claim that they own their abuser, they own their healing, and they own their story. They can learn that the stitching of physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse can unravel when they discover their own language to safely speak about their wounds.