
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$16.27$16.27
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Save with Used - Like New
$6.19$6.19
FREE delivery February 26 - March 3
Ships from: ThriftBooks-Chicago Sold by: ThriftBooks-Chicago

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was A Girl: A Memoir Paperback – August 11, 2020
Purchase options and add-ons
A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Best Book of the Year at TIME, Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, and Electric Literature
Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides―after fourteen years of silence―to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person.
Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own.
Unflinching and courageous, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships―a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions, push towards deeper understanding, and continue a necessary and long overdue conversation.
- Print length376 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTin House Books
- Publication dateAugust 11, 2020
- Dimensions5.6 x 1 x 8.6 inches
- ISBN-101951142039
- ISBN-13978-1951142032
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Frequently bought together

What do customers buy after viewing this item?
From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews
Review
― Laurie Halse Anderson, TIME
"Gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking."
― Carmen Maria Machado, Bustle
"About violence and forgiveness, about friendship and the unwanted title of victim, about digging deeper and deeper to seek answers."
― The New York Times Book Review
"A cuttingly funny meta-meditation on her own pain in the context of #MeToo."
― O, The Oprah Magazine
"A remarkably nuanced account of the complicated and confusing emotions that surface when your rapist is someone you knew and trusted."
― The Cut
"About how important it is to speak about these oft-silenced experiences that cause so many to feel ashamed, scared, and alone."
― NPR
"A stunning work of meta nonfiction. . . . Vanasco’s narrative pushes far past the flattened media narrative of Me Too and asks uncomfortable questions about how to talk about rape culture, toxic masculinity and gender, justice, and resilience."
― Shondaland
"Perhaps the most important book of the season."
― Esquire
"Utterly brilliant."
― Book Riot
"Thought-provoking, unmooring, and haunting."
― NYLON
"Striking. . . . Creates a language for something we don’t talk about."
― The Paris Review
"Heartfelt, painful, and essential."
― Shelf Awareness
"A gripping read and true fodder for the necessary reckoning with toxic masculinity."
― BuzzFeed
"Vanasco immediately makes you wonder how we can take so much about sexual assault for granted."
― The Times Literary Supplement
"Intrepid. . . . A work that has the potential to change the way we think and talk about rape and the people who commit it."
― Bitch
"Sets the canon of #MeToo-era creative nonfiction on fire. . . . Inimitable."
― Booklist, Starred Review
"An extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection."
― Kirkus, Starred Review
"Exactly the book we need right now. . . . I wish everyone in this country would read it."
― Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me
"Stunning."
― Angela Pelster, author of Limber
"A literary feminist miracle."
― Sophia Shalmiyev, author of Mother Winter
"Brilliant."
― Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
"Vanasco is a formidable talent."
― Daniel Gumbiner, author of The Boatbuilder
"An essential, unforgettable work."
― Erik Anderson, author of Flutter Point
"There is so much power in these pages."
― Elissa Washuta, author of My Body is a Book of Rules
"Interrogates the terms of betrayal and the limits of redemption."
― Tim Taranto, author of Ars Botanica
"A rigorous and nuanced investigation."
― Lisa Locascio, author of Open Me
"Wickedly clever and powerful."
― Krystal A. Sital, author of Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad
"Cuts through the silence of deep betrayal."
― Amy Jo Burns, author of Shiner
"Astonishingly fierce."
― Emily Geminder, author of Dead Girls and Other Stories
"Explores the common experience of rape with uncommon nuance and intense tenderness."
― YZ Chin, author of Though I Get Home
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Tin House Books; Reprint edition (August 11, 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 376 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1951142039
- ISBN-13 : 978-1951142032
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.6 x 1 x 8.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #226,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #75 in Sociology Books on Abuse
- #2,716 in Women's Biographies
- #7,560 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming.
Vanasco's writing has appeared in the Believer, the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she now lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University.
Her website is www.jeannievanasco.com.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book insightful and powerful. They appreciate its empathetic perspective and the ability to understand different emotions.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful and powerful. They mention it's an amazing piece of literature with a lot to learn from it.
"...of her recollection, make this a fascinating, if uncomfortable, piece of literature, and her willingness to share such thoughts and feelings is to..." Read more
"This book is incredibly powerful. I admire her for being willing to examine the incident so intensely and also him for being willing to talk to her...." Read more
"...There is so much to understand and learn from this book. As trauma survivor this book is triggering in many ways and extremely powerful in others...." Read more
"The book was OK...I liked the idea of it, when i first read the description, I was very intrigued and wanted to read it...but halfway through it..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's emotional level. They say it makes them realize that it's okay to have different emotions and provides an empathetic perspective.
"...A brave, new, empathetic perspective. So glad I read this." Read more
"...This book has made me realize that it’s okay to have different emotions than those that you are expected to have...." Read more
"I couldn't piut it down. I loved the interviews, the emotions boubced off the page. Vivid account of a horrific act executed by her friend." Read more
Reviews with images

An important book for survivors
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2023An important addition to the genre of feminist literature reckoning with MeToo. A case study in sexual assault, gender, mental illness, child trauma, a predatory culture, and betrayal. A brave, new, empathetic perspective. So glad I read this.
5.0 out of 5 starsAn important addition to the genre of feminist literature reckoning with MeToo. A case study in sexual assault, gender, mental illness, child trauma, a predatory culture, and betrayal. A brave, new, empathetic perspective. So glad I read this.An important book for survivors
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2023
Images in this review
- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020This book is not about a rape. It is about the profound affect that rape, rapists, and a society bent upon ignoring both has on a person. Vanasco is not telling a story here, she is offering a window into her mind which has been permanently affected by men who have taken advantage of her. Her approach to writing about her writing process offers more insight into her experience, offering not just her recollection of the events, but her processing of her recollection, make this a fascinating, if uncomfortable, piece of literature, and her willingness to share such thoughts and feelings is to be admired.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2020As survivor of sexual assault I found it fascinating for her to talk to her perpetrator. It didn't trigger me in any way. I recommend survivors read this if they are in therapy and can handle it if they get triggered.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2020Memoirs always seem a little harder to rate than works of fiction. It's someones story so you have certain things you have to take into consideration rather than just if it's a good story, if the writing is well done, if the characters were written in a way that made them fit the story well, if the plot was well done, and a number of other such things. I bring this up because this lacks in a good majority of those categories, if not all of them. What it does give you is one persons point of view of their own life. It's kind of hard to argue such a thing unless you lived it with them. All that said and out of the way, it's still a book and therefor one that can be read, judged, and reviewed by the masses since it's out there.
What a ramble that was up there. So, here's what I thought about the book.
(*First, I would like to make it clear that I have not experienced any of the things that the author has said she has in her book so I can't truly relate. If others have experience with sexual assault (ranging from unwanted physical attentions to rape) they would possibly relate on a level I can't and their reviews would reflect that.*)
I struggled at times to figure out what the point was of what I was reading in some ways. I mean I got the point about talking to the person who did this atrocious crime when they were young and friends in order to talk about it after all these years but it didn't seem to go anywhere for a long time. That was going on and in between there were other things about another rape, professors touching legs and being aggressive, and a long line of men basically being either out and out hands on sexually abusive or verbal and emotional sexual abuse was going on. So it seemed to be a very long pattern for the author to find herself in. It did make you very frustrated that these types of situations have to happen at all to any woman, ever. There were a lot of other women she knew who were raped and died as well. There was stuff about mental illness, drugs, lots about alcohol and so on but these things took a back burner for the most part.
I just think that this book could have been one of those books that could have helped people more but I suppose it wouldn't be a memoir then? I don't know. Looking back to my first paragraph up there, memoirs can be hard to review because you want to tie up the plot line. Correct the story a bit and fix characters. You want the hero to help the solution so the story gets the right ending. This is real life though isn't it? Doesn't quite work out that way I guess.
So, after all that, I think the book was alright. It told a story and hopefully helped the author work out a time in her life, or times in her life, that were not so great and maybe it'll help others but if not maybe it at least helped the author to get the story out there.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2020This book is incredibly powerful. I admire her for being willing to examine the incident so intensely and also him for being willing to talk to her. It is interesting to get insight from the other side of an incident. As far as the issue of reliable narrating, I found no issues with the information presented and did not feel that anything was unauthentic. I actually found a lot of good sections where I made notes of insights I found to be incredibly profound. I am interested in reading her previous book now. I highly recommend this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2020As a sexual assault survivor, I have struggled to connect to someone who has experienced similar emotions that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. This book has made me realize that it’s okay to have different emotions than those that you are expected to have. The stories that I heard were never like what I was experiencing. I am glad that there is a book that ai can relate to.
I am about half way done with reading the book and will update my review upon completion of it.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2020I would recommend this book to everyone. There is so much to understand and learn from this book. As trauma survivor this book is triggering in many ways and extremely powerful in others. She helped me come to terms with many feelings I have been experiencing lately and has reminded me of the fact that we are so resilient.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2020I couldn't piut it down. I loved the interviews, the emotions boubced off the page. Vivid account of a horrific act executed by her friend.
Top reviews from other countries
- breadofheavenReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2022
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
I enjoyed the writing and the author's insights and could relate with her. The stars are for purely for her work. I had the audio CD and the narrator's speech is heavy with vocal fry which had me gritting my teeth most of the time.