Book Review: "Know My Name" by Chanel Miller
“Know My Name” by Chanel Miller
Synopsis: She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral--viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways--there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.
Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic. - Viking Books
Rating (out of 5): 5
Note: Elizabeth has already reviewed this book, but I wanted to share my thoughts as well.
Review:
In June 2016, I was less than one year removed from an intensely emotionally abusive relationship that made me question everything about myself. My ex-boyfriend isolated me from my friends and family. He told me I was lucky to be dating him. He told me I didn’t appreciate him enough. He would accuse me of cheating if I so much as glanced at another man. He would get angry with me if the elevator in my office building stopped at too many floors as I descended, causing him to have to wait for me. The first year of our relationship had been so magical—now, I just needed to keep trying harder, love him more, appreciate him more, work harder, to get back to that honeymoon phase.
After I finally read his email (don’t @ me) and discovered he had applied for an apartment with his latest victim (despite the fact that we were living together), I finally kicked him out and ended the relationship for good. A few days later, I returned home from the office and found most of his things gone, a huge gaping hole in my bedroom wall where his TV had been mounted. That hole looked how I felt: hollowed out and empty.
But I also felt another, stronger emotion—relief. Relief that I’d never have to beg him not to leave me. Relief that I wouldn’t have to go to the shitty bars he liked. Relief that he’d never again pinch my upper arm and ask me if I was going to the gym. I could get a full night’s sleep. I could visit my friends outside New York without feeling guilty. I could do, quite literally, whatever I wanted. I was able to rediscover who I was and what I cared about.
This was my life in June 2016, when I read Emily Doe’s victim impact statement on Buzzfeed.
What happened to Chanel Miller (then known only as Emily Doe) is, at face value, entirely different from my situation. But they are both the result of men getting free passes, women being expected to prevent and manage men’s bad behavior, how abuse—physical or emotional—strips you of your voice and agency.
When I read Emily Doe’s statement, I cried at my desk. I cried on the train. I cried at home. I read it multiple times. She had perfectly demonstrated how the deck is stacked against us. How the assault changed her. The absurdity of the fact that, even with witnesses testifying against him, her assailant refused to take responsibility for his actions. Drew a direct line between convicted sexual assaulter Brock Turner’s privilege and his lenient sentence.
It was immediately apparent that Emily Doe, whoever she was, was a beautiful writer. That she was courageous, strong, the opposite of how victims are typically portrayed. When the news broke that she was revealing her name, publishing a book, I immediately pre-ordered it.
Chanel Miller is, without a doubt, a stunning writer. She writes not only of her own assault and its aftermath, but of how rape culture and victim-blaming permeates everything: the election of Donald Trump even after the “Access Hollywood” tape and its subsequent minimization as “locker room talk,” people in positions of power assigning blame on victims based on no evidence whatsoever (including black victims of police brutality), the fact that more than 50 women had to tell their stories to lead to a conviction for Bill Cosby.
The themes in this book are ambitious, but Chanel’s writing remains grounded, strong, and full of, quite frankly, charming details that bring this story to life; of Palo Alto, she writes, “…you can smell the sun baking fallen shards of eucalyptus bark. There’s mottled shade in spotless parks, pink-tongued dogs.”
I underlined more than a dozen passages in the book, some that demonstrated the differences between assaulters’ and victims’ experiences:
I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.
Some that demonstrated the absurdity of women being the ones who have to prevent their own sexual assaults:
[Fraternity men’s] behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. When did it become our job to do all the preventing and managing? And if houses existed where many young girls were getting hurt, shouldn’t we hold the guys in those houses to a higher standard, instead of reprimanding the girls? Why was passing out considered more reprehensible than fingering the passed out?
We are taught assault is likely to occur, but if you dressed modestly, you’d lower the chances of it being you. But this would never eradicate the issue, only redirecting the assailant to another unsuspecting victim, off-loading the violence.
Those demonstrating how the legal system is stacked against victims (typically women):
We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors and there was nothing….Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happened when you arrived? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn’t be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.
But the one that made me do a quadruple take was this:
During trial, the jury was forced to pick; is he wholesome or monstrous. But I never questioned that any of what they said about him was true. In fact I need you to know it was all true. The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That’s the terrifying part.
To paraphrase Caitlin Moran, every woman knows at least one man like this. He’s charming, the life of the party. But he gets off on seeing unease and fear in women. He manipulates, he lies. He might be physically abusive. Financially abusive.
When #MeToo reached its peak, prominent women would sometimes make statements on behalf of accused men. “He’s never done anything like that to me,” they’d say. But just because he didn’t do anything to you, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t, or didn’t, do something to someone else. Both things can be true. This is why it’s so important for women to share their experiences with abuse, in whatever form it has occurred. Otherwise, the voices showering abusers with praise will always drown us out.
A few months after I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, his dad and stepmom came to my apartment to collect the rest of his belongings. As his stepmom handed me a check for the money he had stolen from me, she told me, “I hope you learned a lesson.”
I gaped at her, too shocked to say anything. Her stepson had done nothing but lie, cheat, and steal during our entire relationship. I had made the mistake of placing my trust in the wrong person; nothing more—nothing less. Chanel Miller was guilty of drinking too much at a party—nothing more, nothing less.
Read this book. We owe it to Chanel Miller to bear witness to her story, and to tell our own. I am grateful that she wrote this book, and it will remain prominently displayed, dog-eared, on my bookshelf, for years to come.
Trigger Warnings: sexual assault, misogyny, victim-blaming, asshole lawyers
TL;DR: At times difficult to get through, this book is a must-read and a definitive memoir about sexual assault, the criminal justice system, and rape culture.
If you liked this, read these:
“She Said” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (my review here)
“Catch and Kill” by Ronan Farrow (Elizabeth’s review here)
“Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It” by Kate Harding
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