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    The Red Word
    The Red Word
    The Red Word
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Red Word

    Written by Sarah Henstra

    Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to which ideology can go, The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomore year begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry-particularly at a fraternity called GBC. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus. GBC is notorious, she learns, nicknamed "Gang Bang Central" and a prominent contributor to a list of date rapists compiled by female students. Despite continuing to party there and dating one of the brothers, Karen is equally seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surprise her by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of a charismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen finds herself caught between two increasingly polarized camps, ringleader housemate Dyann believes she has hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture-but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateMar 13, 2018
    ISBN9781681689890
    Author

    Sarah Henstra

    Sarah Henstra is an Associate Professor of English literature at Ryerson University. She is the author of Mad Miss Mimic, an historical tale for young adults, and We Contain Multitudes, slated for publication in 2019. The Red Word is her first work of adult fiction. Sarah lives in Toronto, Canada.

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    Reviews for The Red Word

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Here’s a new entry for my Top Ten reads of 2021 so far, and possibly the best campus novel I've ever read, with the focus squarely on women at an unnamed Ivy in the '90s. The sophomore narrator, Karen, moves from the dorms into Raghurst (ha!),a gay feminist collective (she's straight), but spends much of her time hanging out in a frat house whose figurehead, Bruce, is one of those unattainable BMOC golden boys. The inner tension between Karen's own growing prowess at academics, her bewilderment at her own contradictions, and her desperate craving to be noticed and cherished in the two disparate environments is softened by the Raghurst’s favorite professor of Women and Mythology, who reigns over the feminist collective but, aloofly maintains her Zeus-like distance. Each roommate is complex and fascinatingly developed, and even Bruce and Mike, Karen's brainiac boyfriend, are worthy of our focus. Chapters alternate between Karen's life fifteen years post-graduation and her recounting of the Raghurst plot to bring down the frat's two "rape rooms. Sharply written and perfectly balanced between displays of deep emotions and callow youthful yearnings, this is a most memorable addition to the canon that examines student lives over many eras and locales.Quotes: “I kept drinking until I couldn’t feel my own skin, until I was wearing my own face strapped around my head.”“So society sets up these rules and regulations to so-called protect women, but at the same time, everyone kind of expects a woman to be violated at any moment. If she gets raped, or killed, or beaten or whatever, then okay, a rule has been broken, but it’s seen as kind of natural for that to happen because she’s…permeable.”
    • 5/5
      What a great read! A difficult one, often, with some flaws, but this book tells a brutally honest story and is well written. Karen is a Canadian attending university in the U.S. She's dating a "frat boy" and living in a house with four lesbians who are committed feminists. We watch Karen as she straddles both worlds and as she tries to determine her own truth, her own version of reality. The plot evolves as the roommates decide to tackle the rape culture rampant in the fraternities -- a culture condoned by the university administration. This places not only Karen, but other women in a dangerous situation. As Karen asks, do the right people suffer the consequences of the roommates' actions? Where is the trade-off between truth and justice? These are the powerful issues that make the book such a compelling read, even though the characters (except Karen) all seem almost two-dimensional in their unwavering way of seeing the world. I am anxious to read more by this author.
    • 4/5
      For a conference, Karen returns to the town she attended college many years before. It is not a pleasant return since the place is connected to sad memories. Going back there brings it all again to her mind. Her roommates, nice girls at first, whose plan got completely wrong. Her then boy-friend and his fraternity GBC who always treated her nicely but also had another, darker side. The teacher they all admired in their gender studies classes. And the scandal that shock the whole town.Sarah Henstra’s novel tells different tales with only one story. First of all, we have the strong protagonist Karen who as a Canadian always stands a bit outside her fellow students’ circles. She doesn’t have the same background; neither does she have the rich parents who provide her with all she needs not does she come with the intellectual package that most of the others seem to possess. The need to earn money to support herself keeps her from leading the same life as they do. This also brings her into the special situation between the groups who soon find themselves at war.The central topic, however, is how college students deal with sex. On the one hand, we have the partying during which much alcohol and all kinds of drugs are consumed which makes the young people reckless and careless. On the other hand, we have the planned drugging of young women with Rohypnol to abused them. There is a third perspective, represented by the academic intelligentsia: the classic image of the woman as victim, portrayed in history and literature throughout the centuries and which did not change in more than two thousand years.“The Red Word” could hardly be more relevant and up-to-date in the discussions we have seen all over the word about male dominance and indiscriminate abuse of their stronger position. Sarah Henstra does not just foreshadow what happens at the student houses, she openly talks about the rape that happens there. And she does provide a credible picture of what happens afterwards, of how women are accused of having contributed or even asked for it, of lame excuses for the male behaviour and of the psychological effect these experiences have on the students – both, male and female. It is not just black and white, there are many shadows and motives behind their actions, Henstra integrates them convincingly. A felicitous novel with a very important story to tell.