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Published Sep 2019
368 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
The riveting, powerful memoir of the woman whose statement to Brock Turner gave voice to millions of survivors
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.
National Book Critics Circle Awards, 2019
"Know My Name is a blistering, beautifully written account of a courageous young woman's struggle to hold a sexual predator accountable. Miller has performed an invaluable service for multitudes of survivors. Stand back, folks: This book is going to give a huge blast of momentum to the #MeToo movement." - Jon Krakauer
"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." - The Guardian
"Know My Name is one woman's story. But it's also every woman's story — the story of a world whose institutions are built to protect men; a world where sexual objectification is ubiquitous and the threat of sexual violence is constant... [It] is a beautifully written, powerful, important story. It marks the debut of a gifted young writer. It deserves a wide audience — but it especially deserves to be read by the next generation of young men, the could-be Brocks and Elliots, who have grown up seeing women's bodies as property to plunder, who believe that sex is their right." - New York Times, Jennifer Weiner
"Know My Name is a gut-punch, and in the end, somehow, also blessedly hopeful. For every one Brock Turner out there, she tells us, there are two Swedes. Miller urges us to encourage in boys the 'instinct' to call out what's wrong. Be a "tiny flame" of truth that can spread, she writes. She implores us, too, to challenge and question the systems that aren't working. As we examine how to prevent and prosecute sexual assault cases, this last lesson may be the most important of all." - Washington Post, Elizabeth Flock
This information about Know My Name was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chanel Miller is a writer and artist who received her BA in Literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lives in San Francisco, California.
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