Cultivate a community of care during Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Text: "January is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Cultivating a community of care."

 

 

It requires courage and commitment to challenge and change entrenched attitudes, assumptions, and systems.

SAAM is an invitation to SFU and FIC students, faculty, and staff to cultivate a culture of mutual respect and care, which extends out into our wider communities.

  SFU's Sexual Violence Support and Prevention Office

January is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), recognized every year to raise awareness about sexual violence and to empower SFU and FIC students, faculty, and staff to engage with this complex topic in meaningful ways. Learn more about the activities and resources from SFU's Sexual Violence Support and Prevention Office (SVSPO).

In honour of this year's theme, Cultivating a Community of Care, we're sharing books, films, and resources that centre the experiences of Black People, Indigenous People, People of Colour, migrants and refugees, and 2SLGBTQIA+ and gender non-conforming people. Thank you to Massy Books for their inspiring reading list Colour of Violence: Gender, Race and Anti-Violence Services.

Browse the list of book recommendations for survivors curated by the SVSPO Case Managers.

The purpose of this list is to suggest ways to deepen one’s understanding of the forms, prevalence, and impacts of sexual violence and to offer support resources to people who have experienced sexual violence. The books and films in this list all address sexual violence and may include explicit accounts of sexual violence and trauma. This content is challenging and may bring up difficult feelings. We invite you to engage with these texts and films in ways that support your own learning and well-being.

The SVSPO offers free, confidential personal support for SFU and FIC students, faculty or staff who have been impacted by sexual violence. We invite you to connect with an SVSPO case manager if you require support.

Book of the Week recommendations

Each week in January, we'll feature a SAAM Book of the Week.

Week 1: I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom

In this collection of personal essays and prose poems, Kai Cheng Thom asks what it would mean to pursue justice and healing, not through further violence, but through love.

SAAM Book of the Week, featuring I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom

Week 2: They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up by Eternity Martis

A debut memoir about Eternity Martis' undergraduate experiences as a Black woman in the racist, sexist environment of a Canadian university campus.

SAAM Book of the Week: Eternity Martis' They Said This Would Be Fun

Week 3: The Will to Change by bell hooks

In this book, bell hooks examines how patriarchal culture harms all people, and invites men to engage in a process of healing by re-connecting to their own emotional vulnerability.

SAAM Book of the Week: The Will to Change by bell hooks

Read online

Here are just some of the ebooks available to read online.

Borrow or request a print book

Browse or check out these books from our collections.

Watch a film

Picture a Scientist (2021, streaming online through Films on Demand)
"Women make up less than a quarter of STEM professionals in the United States, and numbers are even lower for women of color. But a growing group of researchers is exposing longstanding discrimination and making science more inclusive."

Explore the collection

Violence against women and children research guide (SFU Library)
Our research guide includes extensive resources and research strategies for this topic.

Date(s)
January