College Girl

The inspirational memoir of a woman who survived a brutal sexual assault and went on to become a university professor.
In College Girl, a university professor revisits the memory of a brutal sexual assault and recounts her long, circuitous route from trauma to recovery. Offering present-day reflections alongside the fresh, hopeful voice of the twenty-year-old student she once was, Laura Gray-Rosendale tells the story of her near destruction and her family’s disintegration, but also one of abiding friendships and shining hope. In the end, College Girl is also a story about stories, and a meditation on memoir itself.
Gray-Rosendale writes in a tone that is simply unforgettable—gritty, humorous, and raw. Artfully written and devoid of self-pity, College Girl is a rich story of triumph, hope, and survival.
Laura Gray-Rosendale is Professor of English and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. She is the coeditor of Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left; Fractured Feminisms: Rhetoric, Context, and Contestation; and Alternative Rhetorics: Challenges to the Rhetorical Tradition, all published by SUNY Press. She makes her home in Flagstaff with her husband, Steven, and their dog, D’Artagnan.