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A review by biancafrancisco
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
5.0
The most important book I've read this year.
Nothing I can say here will do it justice. Besides how impactful the content is, the writing is gripping and gut-wrenching. It took me a while to post the review because I was heartbroken after reading it. Chanel shares incredibly on point insights into the process of having been raped (everything that happens after, from the moment you wake up, through the tests, police report, the day to day, the trial, everything), rape culture, interpersonal relationships after trauma, feminism. But it doesn't stop there, because, much like a victim's life, she also is able to include friendship, joy, love, family, art, the small things in life.
Know My Name is many things. A woman reclaiming her personhood. Indignation towards a system that is not built to protect victims and favours the privileged. It's a love letter to survivors of this violence, offering empathy and understanding.
Chanel is an incredible writer, the book is beautifully written and she is able to articulate difficult and complex situations/feelings in eloquent and poignant prose. I look forward to reading any book she writes.
I will warn you that it's uncomfortable to hear (I listened to the audio book narrated by the Chanel). I'd heard of how gruelling it was to press charges of sexual assault - the testing, the shame, the intrusion to your life - but I had no idea how deep it truly went and how it could completely put your life on hold. The constant postponing of the trial was so cruel, and this was a high profile case in the media as she points out herself....I can only imagine when it isn't.
The fact that this was also a 'best case scenario' in which there were witnesses and physical samples were taken right away as well as charges pressed immediately and STILL it was this hard, still it took this long, still the sentencing was a joke. "I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets a conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing."
“My pain was never more valuable than his potential. [...] If punishment is based on potential, privileged people will be given lighter sentences.”
“They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability”
Some ideas stood out to me:
- That walking on the street is like diffusing bombs
- How her boyfriend asked her to stop sending videos of men harassing her in the street because it worried and upset him, but it's not fair that he has the option to unsubscribe to the videos while it's our reality and we don't get not to live it
- Why aren't out boundaries inherent? Why is it a yes until we say no, instead of the opposite?
- If the way men interact with us are so innocent, why does it stops when there's a man with us???
- So so much more, *please just read the book*
It also got me thinking of how to treat sexual offenders. The lack of accountability demonstrated by soft sentences is a huge problem, but what is the solution? Is it more years in prison? How do we go about rehabilitating men who did exactly what society teaches them to do? ("My point can be summed up in the line Brock wrote: 'I just existed in a reality where nothing can go wrong or nobody could think of what I was doing as wrong'. Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him"). Throwing them into an even more violent environment doesn't seem like the recipe for a society where women can live without fear of this violence. But accountability must be taken, it must be understood that their actions are not without consequence, they must feel empathy (Chanel says herself that it was important to her that he understood and owned up to what he did and that she didn't want him to punish more woman so he should go to therapy, take classes, etc). All this to say that the two choices we have now - light sentencing or prolonged encarceration - don't seem to be the solution. This book definitely made me think about our punitive system, which is set up to not protect the victims, even when they 'win' their cases.
Nothing I can say here will do it justice. Besides how impactful the content is, the writing is gripping and gut-wrenching. It took me a while to post the review because I was heartbroken after reading it. Chanel shares incredibly on point insights into the process of having been raped (everything that happens after, from the moment you wake up, through the tests, police report, the day to day, the trial, everything), rape culture, interpersonal relationships after trauma, feminism. But it doesn't stop there, because, much like a victim's life, she also is able to include friendship, joy, love, family, art, the small things in life.
Know My Name is many things. A woman reclaiming her personhood. Indignation towards a system that is not built to protect victims and favours the privileged. It's a love letter to survivors of this violence, offering empathy and understanding.
Chanel is an incredible writer, the book is beautifully written and she is able to articulate difficult and complex situations/feelings in eloquent and poignant prose. I look forward to reading any book she writes.
I will warn you that it's uncomfortable to hear (I listened to the audio book narrated by the Chanel). I'd heard of how gruelling it was to press charges of sexual assault - the testing, the shame, the intrusion to your life - but I had no idea how deep it truly went and how it could completely put your life on hold. The constant postponing of the trial was so cruel, and this was a high profile case in the media as she points out herself....I can only imagine when it isn't.
The fact that this was also a 'best case scenario' in which there were witnesses and physical samples were taken right away as well as charges pressed immediately and STILL it was this hard, still it took this long, still the sentencing was a joke. "I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets a conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing."
“My pain was never more valuable than his potential. [...] If punishment is based on potential, privileged people will be given lighter sentences.”
“They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability”
Some ideas stood out to me:
- That walking on the street is like diffusing bombs
- How her boyfriend asked her to stop sending videos of men harassing her in the street because it worried and upset him, but it's not fair that he has the option to unsubscribe to the videos while it's our reality and we don't get not to live it
- Why aren't out boundaries inherent? Why is it a yes until we say no, instead of the opposite?
- If the way men interact with us are so innocent, why does it stops when there's a man with us???
- So so much more, *please just read the book*
It also got me thinking of how to treat sexual offenders. The lack of accountability demonstrated by soft sentences is a huge problem, but what is the solution? Is it more years in prison? How do we go about rehabilitating men who did exactly what society teaches them to do? ("My point can be summed up in the line Brock wrote: 'I just existed in a reality where nothing can go wrong or nobody could think of what I was doing as wrong'. Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him"). Throwing them into an even more violent environment doesn't seem like the recipe for a society where women can live without fear of this violence. But accountability must be taken, it must be understood that their actions are not without consequence, they must feel empathy (Chanel says herself that it was important to her that he understood and owned up to what he did and that she didn't want him to punish more woman so he should go to therapy, take classes, etc). All this to say that the two choices we have now - light sentencing or prolonged encarceration - don't seem to be the solution. This book definitely made me think about our punitive system, which is set up to not protect the victims, even when they 'win' their cases.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Rape