Overview

A lyrical and groundbreaking exploration of the misun­derstood ways women survive and forever carry trauma from the award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Jen Percy. “Percy’s subject is brutal, but her writing allays some of the impact by being almost impossibly beautiful: crisp, vulnerable, lyrical....Her stories, woven together, become something like a fabric, a totality....Girls Play Dead is a vital continuation of [the effort] 'to tell true stories of women’s lives,' in such breadth and definition that the justice system finally has to acknowledge what it’s been obscuring.” — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic “Girls Play Dead reads like a novel, exquisitely rendered, and a kind of geography, mapping out the complexities of women’s experiences going ‘down below’ and the specific ways that they come to understand their altered bodies and minds.” —Rachel Aviv, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves After a childhood spent learning survival strategies in the wilderness, Jen Percy thought she knew how she would respond in the face of danger. But a series of unsettling interactions with men left her feeling betrayed and confounded by her body's passivity. Forced to reckon the myths of her own empowerment, Percy set off a broader inquiry into the way fear shapes behavior in the context of sexual violence, including the strange behaviors of three generations of women in her family.            Drawing on original reporting, years of conversations with survivors, and her own life story, Percy explores the surprising ways in which responses to sexual violence are shaped by both evolutionary instinct and gendered scripts. She takes on taboo subjects—orgasms during assault, sexual promiscuity, female rage, freezing and passivity—illuminating how society misreads these acts as deviance or consent, rather than brilliant acts of self-preservation. Like Joan Didion, Katherine Boo, and Janet Malcolm, Percy is a fearless cultural critic with a talent for wresting deep truths from lived experiences. Girls Play Dead meaningfully expands the language available to survivors and complicates our expectations of how a trauma story should sound—especially when belief, justice, and healing are contingent on how well a story “makes sense.” Percy examines how trauma corrupts storytelling itself, making survivors’ accounts seem fractured or surreal—and therefore less credible to institutions demanding coherence—resulting in an ambitious testament to the mind as a record of resilience.

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9780385550048

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Reviews

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “Girls Play Dead reads like a novel, exquisitely rendered, and a kind of geography, mapping out the complexities of women’s experiences going 'down below' and the specific ways that they come to understand their altered bodies and minds. Percy is a beautiful writer who somehow finds the narratives that exist in the spaces of the ones we already know.” —Rachel Aviv, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us “Girls Play Dead is a masterful, story-driven, and consistently surprising literary examination of fear itself. Every sentence is interesting. This extraordinary book will change the way you think.” —Kerry Howley, author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State “With Girls Play Dead, Jen Percy captures an entire dimension of women’s experience that until now has remained unnameable. Through several compelling voices, including her own, she tells of the often-surprising ways in which our bodies absorb shames and traumas great and small, and how far our minds can stretch to spin stories that help us survive. So many women have been waiting for a way to have this conversation—and here it is.” —Alex Mar, author of Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “With Girls Play Dead, Jen Percy captures an entire dimension of women’s experience that until now has remained unnameable. Through several compelling voices, including her own, she tells of the often-surprising ways in which our bodies absorb shames and traumas great and small, and how far our minds can stretch to spin stories that help us survive. So many women have been waiting for a way to have this conversation—and here it is.” —Alex Mar, author of Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “Girls Play Dead reads like a novel, exquisitely rendered, and a kind of geography, mapping out the complexities of women’s experiences going 'down below' and the specific ways that they come to understand their altered bodies and minds. Percy is a beautiful writer who somehow finds the narratives that exist in the spaces of the ones we already know.” —Rachel Aviv, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us “Jen Percy has captured, in the most lyrical and authentic way possible, what it means to be a woman alive today. The threats, the systems, the brutality and the beauty. Girls Play Dead illustrates what our best books can do, what they can say in a time of crisis, and indeed, why we need them for our very survival. I read it, got to the end and immediately began again. It is so full of wisdom and heart and somehow—I don’t know how she’s done it—makes me feel less alone in the world. I am fully in awe of this book.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned. “Girls Play Dead is a masterful, prose-driven, consistently surprising literary examination of fear itself. This book will change the way you think about other minds.” —Kerry Howley, author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State “With Girls Play Dead, Jen Percy captures an entire dimension of women’s experience that until now has remained unnameable. Through several compelling voices, including her own, she tells of the often-surprising ways in which our bodies absorb shames and traumas great and small, and how far our minds can stretch to spin stories that help us survive. So many women have been waiting for a way to have this conversation—and here it is.” —Alex Mar, author of Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

One of the Washington Post's Fall Preview Picks • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “Girls Play Dead reads like a novel, exquisitely rendered, and a kind of geography, mapping out the complexities of women’s experiences going 'down below' and the specific ways that they come to understand their altered bodies and minds. Percy is a beautiful writer who somehow finds the narratives that exist in the spaces of the ones we already know.” —Rachel Aviv, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us “Award-winning magazine writer Percy offers a wide-ranging, deeply reported and equally empathetic account of the ways women react to sexual assault, and the ways they’re judged for it.” —The Washington Post Fall Preview “A groundbreaking exploration of women’s often shamed and silenced responses to sexual assault. . . .Extensive, empathetic. . . .A vital record of a little discussed aspect of women’s lived reality.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Jen Percy has captured, in the most lyrical and authentic way possible, what it means to be a woman alive today. The threats, the systems, the brutality and the beauty. Girls Play Dead illustrates what our best books can do, what they can say in a time of crisis, and indeed, why we need them for our very survival. I read it, got to the end and immediately began again. It is so full of wisdom and heart and somehow—I don’t know how she’s done it—makes me feel less alone in the world. I am fully in awe of this book.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned “Girls Play Dead is the book I have been waiting for—a book about freezing, frozen women, hysterical women, trembling women, and how these reactions to trauma, insensible as they may outwardly seem, are our purest acts of survival. Jen Percy is a magician.” —Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Man Who Could Move Clouds “[Jen Percy shows] an immense capacity for empathy and nuance. . . .Percy has done an excellent job of discussing an essential topic with understanding and sensitivity. The openness and willingness to consider the most difficult aspects of an already difficult subject are remarkable, as are the research and the understanding needed to tell these critical stories.” —Kirkus Reviews “Girls Play Dead is a masterful, prose-driven, consistently surprising literary examination of fear itself. This book will change the way you think about other minds.” —Kerry Howley, author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State “A rigorous and groundbreaking inquiry, Jen Percy's Girls Play Dead reminds us that there is so much more to understand about women's inner lives and the impact of sexual violence. Percy's entirely fresh perspective is liberating and expansive, as are her luminous descriptions of her unique childhood. The story of a young woman's formative experiences has never been told quite like this.” —Suzy Hansen, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country “With Girls Play Dead, Jen Percy captures an entire dimension of women’s experience that until now has remained unnameable. Through several compelling voices, including her own, she tells of the often-surprising ways in which our bodies absorb shames and traumas great and small, and how far our minds can stretch to spin stories that help us survive. So many women have been waiting for a way to have this conversation—and here it is.” —Alex Mar, author of Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

Author Information

JEN PERCY is a contributing writer at New York Times Magazine and recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. She is the author of the nonfiction book Demon Camp, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Percy has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts grant, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and MacDowell. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Percy has published essays in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, BookForum, The New Republic, Esquire, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Columbia University.

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