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Summary
Summary
Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller's breathtaking memoir "gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer, the artist, the survivor, the fighter." ( The Wrap ).
"I opened Know My Name with the intention to bear witness to the story of a survivor. Instead, I found myself falling into the hands of one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. Chanel Miller is a philosopher, a cultural critic, a deep observer, a writer's writer, a true artist. I could not put this phenomenal book down." --Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and Untamed
" Know My Name is a gut-punch, and in the end, somehow, also blessedly hopeful." -- Washington Post
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.
Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, TIME, Elle, Glamour, Parade, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, BookRiot
Author Notes
Chanel Miller is a writer and artist. Her memoir, Know My Name , was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Ridenhour Book Prize, and the California Book Award. It was also a best book of the year in Time, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, and People, among others. She was named one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and a Time Next 100 honoree, and was a Glamour Woman of the Year honoree under her pseudonym Emily Doe.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Miller's inspiring memoir grew out of her writing her victim impact statement for the sentencing of Brock Turner, a 19-year-old Stanford University swimmer who was convicted of raping her. An unconscious Miller was assaulted by Turner behind a dumpster outside a Stanford party in 2015, when she was 22 and visiting her sister, who was a student there. After laying out these facts, Miller recalls growing up in Palo Alto in a mixed-race family, her fledgling career as an illustrator, and her aspirations as a writer. The story that follows, of Miller waking up in a San Jose hospital with pine cones in her hair and an incomplete memory of the night before, is masterfully crafted by juxtaposing the details of physical evidence and accounts from witnesses with Miller's growing awareness that her life as she knew it was over ("It is utter confusion paired with knowing"). Miller describes the toll the trial takes on her and her family, and her desire to go back to her life before the assault. After writing her victim statement, which she published to an overwhelmingly positive reception on BuzzFeed, she begins to connect her previous interest in writing with her new identity as a survivor. This harrowing memoir is a convincing testament to the healing power of writing. (Sept.)
Guardian Review
Long known as 'Emily Doe', the survivor in the Brock Turner sexual assault case tells her powerful story, and offers hope. It could have been an entirely different story, one so ordinary in its violent diminishment of a woman. The script is well-worn. An assault at a student party; a disorienting walk through hospital clinics and police stations; panic attacks; a forensic examination of your character. How much did you drink? Why did you go to that party? Did you have a stable relationship with your boyfriend? You react by receding further into yourself. Perhaps you drop the charges; perhaps the judge is lenient. Your assailant soon gets on with his life, free to walk the halls of power. Trust the system, you were told. But sometimes there are facts that bring you closer to something resembling justice. For a 22-year-old recent university graduate known to the world as "Emily Doe", there were a few. Fact: Brock Turner, the man who assaults her behind a fraternity house skip in January 2015, is a Stanford University student and swimmer. Spiralling media attention in what is deemed the "Stanford swimmer case" means her rape forensic evidence kit receives expedited processing, thus avoiding, she later relates, the fate of a hundred others collecting dust in a slow-moving backlog. Fact: there are two witnesses to the assault, male graduate students who happen to be cycling past. They chase Turner away, and testify in Doe's favour. Fact: after Turner is found guilty on three felony counts in March 2016, Doe, now 23, writes a powerful 7,000-word letter addressed to her attacker that she reads aloud at his sentencing. It is published on BuzzFeed in June and goes viral, receiving 15m views within a week. The letter is read aloud by congresswomen in the House of Representatives and, in response, California's laws for sexual assault are amended to support future victims. Its opening line is often cited: "You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today." When I first read it, I was also haunted by two other lines: "Sometimes I think, if I hadn't gone, then this never would've happened. But then I realised it would have happened, just to somebody else." What a strange world it is in which 23-year-olds are reflecting on the randomness of the cruelty inflicted on them. Earlier this month, "Emily Doe" revealed herself to be Chanel Miller, a half-Chinese artist and writer from California. Miller, now 27, looks back at her high-profile sexual assault case in Know My Name. In the three years since the sentencing, she has gathered court transcripts and witness testimonies withheld from her during the case, which inform her memoir. The book blends Miller's meditations on her life over the past few years with a discussion of the institutions that handle sexual assault cases: the police, the courts, and, in this instance, the university. Courtroom interrogations, ostensibly seeking objective facts, become contests over whose narrative draws the most sympathy. University administrators offer, then withdraw, their support in the face of potential litigation. The neutral faces of institutions, her story shows, so easily slip to reveal highly subjective battles over whose pain counts for what. The title of the book denotes declarative self-affirmation, something constantly denied to Miller after she woke up at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre in January 2015 with a police deputy and Stanford dean at her bedside. The last thing she remembers is stepping outside the fraternity house with her sister the night before. From then on, her life no longer feels like it is hers. In a daze at the medical centre, she is told there is reason to believe she has been assaulted and signs a stack of papers consenting to an immediate examination. Ten days later, on coming across an article online at work, she learns the full story of what happened to her. She reads of Turner's life as an "Olympic hopeful" and discovers she is referred to as an "unconscious woman". This dynamic will carry over into the courtroom, where, she relates, Turner's ambitions, past accomplishments and present pain are magnified in testimonies from swimming coaches and ex-girlfriends. She, on the other hand, becomes a woman who failed to adequately protect herself against the natural lechery of the world that night in January, her use of alcohol thoroughly questioned. "His history included his childhood, education, summer jobs, sweet relationships," she writes. "My history was blackouts one through five." The book unveils what those on the outside can't see. Miller recalls the repeated postponement of her trials, which leaves her schedule agonisingly beholden to someone else's whims; her recurrent feelings of panic and dread that emerge long after the attack; the rebuilding of her life, as she takes art classes and joins comedy troupes to recover a sense of self. In the midst of all this, she navigates a byzantine legal system, often having to sit in the same courtroom as her attacker. One of the many lessons that comes across is how sexual assault victims need greater guidance through these worlds. When Miller agrees to press charges against Turner, she does so casually over the phone to a detective, right after she is discharged from the hospital. She does not realise what that will entail, thinking it to be the "equivalent to signing a petition". A year and a half later, Miller is talking to a probation officer about Turner's sentencing and confuses jail with prison (jail typically holds people awaiting trial or serving short sentences while those in prison tend to be serving longer sentences for more severe offences). She is sure that the officer twists her meaning, playing down the anguish in her testimony to recommend a short county jail sentence for Turner. When it was published in 2016, Miller's letter stunned readers with the clarity of her voice, acuity of her rage and expansiveness of her empathy towards those in need of support. Her story offered other victims a shared language; Miller recalls receiving thousands of supportive letters from women recounting their own stories. Her memoir has this same mix of the intimate with the communal, placing her own pain against a backdrop of shared suffering. At the end of Turner's sentencing, she feels as if she has climbed a high mountain of justice, a climb that many fellow victims have not been able to scale. Exhausted, she imagines looking down, "where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly ¿ What could I tell them? The system does not exist for you." Against a system that leads victims to recede into their own spheres of private suffering, Know My Name creates a space where this pain can sit and receive support from others. The last few chapters discuss the #MeToo movement and its landmark moments: the Harvey Weinstein revelations; the US gymnastics case; Christine Blasey Ford's testimony in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. When listening to women tell their stories, Miller stresses, it is important to let them sit with their hurt and anger and resist the urge to pre-emptively tie up their suffering with a bow through platitudes of courage. There is a final irony in how Stanford University, after agreeing to mount a plaque memorialising her story on campus, proposed as the inscribed quote: "I'm right here, I'm okay. Everything's okay, I'm right here." (Stanford had rejected Miller's suggestions, finding them too emotionally charged.) These were the words, she tells us, she told her sister after being released from the hospital, hiding her own panic for her sister's comfort. Even after cases are concluded, the pain of victims is diminished by the false friend of commemorating one's bravery. In a world that asks too many survivors to keep their experiences to themselves and shrink their suffering to preserve someone else's potential, Know My Name stands unapologetically large, asking others to reckon with its author's dazzling, undiminishable presence. To read it, in spite of everything, inspires hope.
Library Journal Review
It was a well-known story that captured headlines around the world: An unconscious woman was sexually assaulted on the Stanford University campus. Media described the attacker as a one-time Olympic swimming hopeful. A jury found him guilty. The victim's impact statement went viral. The judge sentenced the rapist to six months in jail, sparking public outrage. Through it all the victim was known as Emily Doe. Here Miller steps forward to reclaim the narrative. She goes beyond the headlines of what Brock Turner did on that night in January 2015 to show who she was before and what she endured after the attack and subsequent trial that exhibited white privilege, victim blaming, and the injustice of the justice system. Miller's memoir takes listeners back to witness the moments leading up to her assault, the immediate aftermath, and the years leading to her decision to come forward with her story. VERDICT Her writing will draw readers in, but it's her narration--ranging from vulnerable to defiant to hopeful--that will keep listeners captivated until the very last word--Gladys Alcedo, Wallingford, CT
Excerpts
Excerpts
I N T R O D U C T I O N The fact that I spelled subpoena, suhpeena, may suggest I am not qualified to tell this story. But all court transcripts are at the world's disposal, all news articles online. This is not the ultimate truth, but it is mine, told to the best of my ability. If you want it through my eyes and ears, to know what it felt like inside my chest, what it's like to hide in the bathroom during trial, this is what I provide. I give what I can, you take what you need. In January 2015, I was twenty-two, living and working in my home- town of Palo Alto, California. I attended a party at Stanford. I was sexually assaulted outside on the ground. Two bystanders saw it, stopped him, saved me. My old life left me, and a new one began. I was given a new name to protect my identity: I became Emily Doe. In this story, I will be calling the defense attorney, the defense . The judge, the judge . They are here to demonstrate the roles they played. This is not a personal indictment, not a clapback, a blacklist, a rehashing. I believe we are all multidimensional beings, and in court, it felt harmful being f lattened, characterized, mislabeled, and vilified, so I will not do the same to them. I will use Brock's name, but the truth is he could be Brad or Brody or Benson, and it doesn't matter. The point is not their individual significance, but their commonality, all the peo- ple enabling a broken system. This is an attempt to transform the hurt inside myself, to confront a past, and find a way to live with and incor- porate these memories. I want to leave them behind so I can move forward. In not naming them, I finally name myself. My name is Chanel. I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am. However, I am not Brock Turner's victim . I am not his anything. I don't belong to him. I am also half Chinese. My Chinese name is Zhang Xiao Xia, which translates to Little Summer . I was named summer because: I was born in June. Xia is also China's first dynasty. I am the first child. "Xia" sounds like "sha." Chanel. The FBI defines rape as any kind of penetration. But in California, rape is narrowly defined as the act of sexual intercourse. For a long time I refrained from calling him a rapist, afraid of being corrected. Legal definitions are important. So is mine. He filled a cavity in my body with his hands. I believe he is not absolved of the title simply because he ran out of time. The saddest things about these cases, beyond the crimes themselves, are the degrading things the victim begins to believe about her being. My hope is to undo these beliefs. I say her, but whether you are a man, transgender, gender-nonconforming, however you choose to identify and exist in this world, if your life has been touched by sexual violence, I seek to protect you. And to the ones who lifted me, day by day, out of darkness, I hope to say thank you. 1. I AM SHY. In elementary school for a play about a safari, everyone else was an animal. I was grass. I've never asked a question in a large lecture hall. You can find me hidden in the corner of any exercise class. I'll apologize if you bump into me. I'll accept every pamphlet you hand out on the street. I've always rolled my shopping cart back to its place of ori- gin. If there's no more half-and-half on the counter at the coffee shop, I'll drink my coffee black. If I sleep over, the blankets will look like they've never been touched. I've never thrown my own birthday party. I'll put on three sweaters before I ask you to turn on the heat. I'm okay with losing board games. I stuff my coins haphazardly into my purse to avoid holding up the checkout line. When I was little I wanted to grow up and become a mascot, so I'd have the freedom to dance without being seen. I was the only elementary school student to be elected as a conflict manager two years in a row; my job was to wear a green vest every recess, patrolling the playground. If anyone had an unsolvable dispute, they'd find me and I'd teach them about I-Messages such as I feel when you . Once a kindergartner approached me, said everyone got ten seconds on the tire swing, but when she swung, kids counted one cat, two cat, three cat , and when the boys swung, they counted one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus , longer turns. I declared from that day forward everyone would count one tiger, two tiger . My whole life I've counted in tigers. I introduce myself here, because in the story I'm about to tell, I begin with no name or identity. No character traits or behaviors assigned to me. I was found as a half-naked body, alone and unconscious. No wallet, no ID. Policemen were summoned, a Stanford dean was awakened to come see if he could recognize me, witnesses asked around; nobody knew who I belonged to, where I'd come from, who I was. My memory tells me this: On Saturday, January 17, 2015, I was living at my parents' house in Palo Alto. My younger sister, Tiffany, a junior at Cal Poly, had driven three hours up the coast for the long weekend. She usually spent her time at home with friends, but occasionally she'd give some of that time to me. In the late afternoon, the two of us picked up her friend Julia, a Stanford student, and drove to the Arastradero Preserve to watch the sun spill its yolk over the hills. The sky darkened, we stopped at a taqueria. We had a heated debate about where pigeons sleep, argued about whether more people fold toilet paper into squares (me) or simply crumple it (Tiffany). Tiffany and Julia mentioned a party they were going to that evening at Kappa Alpha on the Stanford campus. I paid little attention, ladling green salsa into a teeny plastic cup. Later that night, my dad cooked broccoli and quinoa, and we reeled when he presented it as qwee-noah . It's keen-wah, Dad, how do you not know that!! We ate on paper plates to avoid washing dishes. Two more of Tiffany's friends, Colleen and Trea, arrived with a bottle of champagne. The plan was for the three of them to meet Julia at Stanford. They said, You should come . I said, Should I go, would it be funny if I went. I'd be the oldest one there. I rinsed in the shower, singing. Sifted through wads of socks looking for undies, found a worn polka-dotted triangle of fabric in the corner. I pulled on a tight, charcoal-gray dress. A heavy silver necklace with tiny red stones. An oatmeal cardigan with large brown buttons. I sat on my brown carpet, lacing up my coffee-colored combat boots, my hair still wet in a bun. Our kitchen wallpaper is striped blue and yellow. An old clock and wooden cabinets line the walls, the doorframe marked with our heights over the years (a small shoe symbol drawn if we were measured while wearing them). Opening and closing cabinet doors, we found nothing but whiskey; in the refrigerator the only mixers were soy milk and lime juice. The only shot glasses we had were from family trips, Las Vegas, Maui, back when Tiffany and I collected them as little cups for our stuffed animals. I drank the whiskey straight, unapologetically, freely, the same way you might say, Sure I' ll attend your cousin's bar mitzvah, on the one condition that I'm hammered . We asked our mom to take the four of us to Stanford, a seven-minute drive down Foothill Expressway. Stanford was my backyard, my community, a breeding ground for cheap tutors my parents hired over the years. I grew up on that campus, attended summer camps in tents on the lawns, snuck out of dining halls with chicken nuggets bulging from my pockets, had dinner with professors who were parents of good friends. My mom dropped us off near the Stanford bookstore, where on rainy days she had brought us for hot cocoa and madeleines. We walked five minutes, descended the slope of pavement to a large house tucked beneath pine trees. A guy with tiny tally marks of hair on his upper lip let us in. I found a soda and juice dispenser in the fraternity kitchen, began slapping the buttons, concocting a nonalcoholic beverage I advertised as dingleberry juice. Now serving le dinglebooboo drank for the lady! KA, KA all day. People started pouring in. The lights went off. We stood behind a table by the front door like a welcoming committee, spread our arms and sang, Welcome welcome welcome!!! I watched the way girls entered, heads tucked halfway into their shoulders, smiling timidly, scanning the room for a familiar face to latch on to. I knew that look because I'd felt it. In college, a fraternity was an exclusive kingdom, throbbing with noise and energy, where the young ones heiled and the large males ruled. After college, a fraternity was a sour, yeasty atmosphere, a scattering of f limsy cups, where you could hear the soles of your shoes unpeeling from sticky floors, and punch tasted like paint thinner, and curls of black hair were pasted to toilet rims. We discovered a plastic handle of vodka on the table. I cradled it like I'd discovered water in the desert. Bless me. I poured it into a cup and threw it back straight. Everyone was mashed up against each other on tables, swaying like little penguins. I stood alone on a chair, arms in the air, a drunk piece of seaweed, until my sister escorted me down. We went outside to pee in the bushes. Julia and I began freestyle rapping. I rapped about dry skin, got stuck when I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with Cetaphil . The basement was full, people spilling out onto the orb of light on the concrete patio. We stood around a few short Caucasian guys who wore their caps backward, careful not to get their necks sunburned, indoors, at night. I sipped a lukewarm beer, said it tasted like pee, and handed it to my sister. I was bored, at ease, drunk, and extremely tired, less than ten minutes away from home. I had outgrown everything around me. And that is where my memory goes black, where the reel cuts off. I, to this day, believe none of what I did that evening is important, a handful of disposable memories. But these events will be relentlessly raked over, again and again and again. What I did, what I said, will all be sliced, measured, calculated, presented to the public for evaluation. All because, somewhere at this party, is him. Excerpted from Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.