ehawley's Book Journey

Chanel Miller, I doubt you’ll ever see this, but I want you to know how deeply I admire you. Thank you - for your courage, your strength, and the way you kept going even when the world failed you. For standing up for yourself, and for everyone who didn’t get the chance to. For sharing your story with such honesty and for lending your voice to a fight that’s still far from over.

Your words carry a power that will stay with me long after I closed this book.

Know My Name is a book I will never forget.

I think the first thing I want to say is: I admire Chanel Miller so much. I admire her for writing this book. For returning to moments that must have been incredibly painful to revisit. For putting words to experiences that so many people are forced to carry silently. For continuing to fight, even when the people and systems that should have protected her failed her.

Know My Name is not an easy book to read. It is heartbreaking, infuriating, and exhausting. But it is also one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read.

One of the things that stayed with me the most was the sheer amount of energy Chanel had to spend simply trying to be heard. Not just during the trial, but afterwards too. She had to fight to be seen as a person rather than a headline, a case, or a symbol.

And that is what makes this book so painful: the fact that she had to be this strong in the first place. It is exhausting to constantly celebrate survivors for their bravery and strength when the reality is that they should never have been forced into a position where they needed to be brave just to have their experiences acknowledged.

Chanel writes about that exhaustion so honestly. The anger, the grief, the loneliness, the moments where she didn't know how much more she could give. But she also writes about love, friendship, kindness, and the people who showed up for her when everything felt impossible.

Her writing completely captivated me. I don't usually read memoirs, but I found myself highlighting so many passages because she has this incredible ability to describe emotions that feel almost impossible to explain. The way she uses imagery, the way she reflects on her own experiences, the way she lets herself be vulnerable, it all made this book feel incredibly personal.

There were moments where I didn't feel like I was just reading her story. I felt like I was standing beside her: at the party, in the hospital, at home, in the courtroom. Not as someone looking in from the outside, but as someone listening.

And I think that is the most important thing this book does.

It asks us to listen.

Not just to Chanel, but to every survivor whose voice has been ignored, questioned, or taken away.

What I appreciated most is that Chanel never lets herself become only what happened to her. This book is about sexual assault, the justice system, and the ways society fails survivors, but it is also about a person. A person who loves, laughs, gets angry, makes mistakes, builds relationships, and continues living.

She reminds us that survivors are never just their trauma. They are entire people. They have names. They have stories.

And so many people never get the chance to tell theirs.

I am so grateful Chanel Miller got to tell hers.

Chanel Miller, I doubt you’ll ever see this, but I want you to know how deeply I admire you. Thank you - for your courage, your strength, and the way you kept going even when the world failed you. For standing up for yourself, and for everyone who didn’t get the chance to. For sharing your story with such honesty and for lending your voice to a fight that’s still far from over.

Your words carry a power that will stay with me long after I closed this book.

Know My Name is a steady, heartbreaking reminder that listening and letting women speak—for themselves, for others, for us all—is radical. Infuriating, painful, and necessary, Chanel Miller gives voice to her resistance; to seeking justice.

Crying during reviews isn't something I typically do, but anybody who reads this book understands. I'm tired, we're all tired. It's tiring to applaud and appreciate a woman for being brave and vulnerable to talk about her assault. It's tiring praising Miller for reclaiming her experience and being so angry, so enraged on her behalf, for the need for her to do so in the first place. And Miller doesn't shy away from that exhaustion, from the bone deep, soulfully weariness that she experienced. Having to fight against the system as Emily Doe during and again as Chanel Miller after to be heard, my heart breaks for her. My heart also thanks her.

As she writes and recounts before the assault, during the trial, and the life after, Chanel vigorously becomes what she wanted: a writer and a storyteller. Continuously struck by her imagery, her bleeding heart, anger, and pain so detailed on the page, I couldn't help but feel like I was there with her. I was there at the party, at the ER, at home, across the country, and in the courtroom. In that fucking courtroom. Not only as an observer or a reader, but as a woman, as an ally, as a survivor. There's something powerful and infuriating how this single woman had to fight so hard for so long and so alone and yet, I and many others feel seen in more ways than one in this book. The reminder that experience is communal, even if no one is around. Memoirs have that distinct way of connecting author and readers through a general shared experience; but Know My Name speaks to something so poignant, so tender, so life-altering, it's easy to see why she, even as Emily Doe, became the voice for so many of us.

‘When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?’

Beautifully written and something everyone should read. If you’re reading this, Know My Name has become required reading. Add it to your TBR right now. Miller not only voices her own experience, she is voicing the experiences of millions of girls and women who are sexually assaulted by men. She reminds us that she is a lucky one. She was able to be heard, she was able to get a semblance of justice. She reminded us of the girls and women who are ignored, harassed and beaten down for daring to speak up against their abusers. It’s time to start listening to the women in our lives and believing them.

I listened via audiobook and Miller narrated. She did an amazing job.

(No rating as I don’t usually rate memoirs)

My overall feeling after finishing this book is gratitude. I'm so thankful to Chanel Miller for sharing with the world her experience. I was a college student at the time of her assault, and now ten years later I'm so glad that I'm able to hear her story from her. I can let it erase the memories I have of the coverage at the time, which centered the man who assaulted her, and made me scared to live on a college campus. Her honesty and vulnerability in her writing will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Listened to the audiobook and felt so empowered by Chanel’s ability to give readers the raw data combined with her vulnerability and growth in gaining a foothold on what was being done to her. The epiphanies. The knowledge that others assumed she had that later tripper her up. How she did her best to recover from each self-doubt. I signed that recall petition. To be able to hear her account, in her own words, in her own voice, felt like gift to me personally. Reading this book has filled in some empty spots in my own sexual trauma experience and informed me by putting words to feelings I hadn’t been able narrate. Thank you Chanel ❤️

Powerful and poignant, Know My Name is a must-read memoir with insight into the real suffering that victims of sexual assault experience not just from the initial event, but from the revictimization from the court system, public opinion, and watching other perpetrators receive national applause. Miller's prose is beautiful and gripping—I was on the verge of tears for most of the book. Hers is a voice that must be heard, like every voice that is stolen via SA. We must listen.

Though painful, Miller does not shy away from the truth of a survivor's experience, from the anger with no place to put it to the isolation and difficulties in close relationships. Telling the truth is the greatest solidarity, and in that there is hope. May every survivor have someone to reach toward them and lead with understanding. This book is a place of understanding. If you are in a place to read a book about this topic, I highly recommend this one.

I think this book is incredibly important and a step in the right direction for talking about SA. What Chanel went through is, unfortunately, not an uncommon thing, and we need to find a way to put this topic more in the forefront instead of acting like it doesn't happen.

The last half of the book shows just a snippet of how horribly victims are treated in the US criminal justice system. As well as showing how big institutions only care about their reputation and not about any of the people under them. Victims go through hell repeatedly and for what? For small prison sentences or, even worse, no prison time at all? It's truly harrowing.

I encourage everyone to read Emily Doe's Victim Impact Statement. It's at the end of the book, but I'm sure it's also widely available on the internet. It's very powerful and heartbreakingily touching.

This was a challenging book to get through, but an incredibly impactful one. I listened to the audiobook and it was that much more powerful, hearing Chanel’s own voice. She spoke so steadily about the atrocities she experienced, and it was so much more than the news headlines—impacted so many individuals. It’ll stick with me a long time, especially given the world we’re living in today.

An incredibly powerful portrayal of how rape is experienced by the victim.

Chanel decided to raise her voice, step out of anonymity and create an outstanding piece of work to educate people on sexual assault and its overall impact. While also, being vulnerable and connecting with so many people who often feel like they are alone and no one would understand them due to how society treats rape survivors.

I never want to hear anyone demand a victim to report and go to trial to believe them, when the current system does not protect them. This is my main takeaway from the book.

"Do you understand, when you ask a victim to report, what you’re telling her to walk into? Why didn’t she go to the police? I had deputies, a detective, paramedics, I had squad cars, an ambulance. I had them handcuffing him, photographing me, recording witness accounts, jotting down every detail of my body from the thin chain wrapped around my neck to the laces of my shoes, my clothes collected, his clothes collected. I pressed charges within twenty-four hours of the assault and here I was three years later reading the appellate attorney’s statements, ..., When you say go to the police what do you envision? I was grateful for my team. But the police will move on to other cases while the victim is left in the agonizing, protracted judicial process, where she will be made to question, and then forget, who she is. You were just physically attacked? Here’s some information on how you can enter a multiyear process of verbal abuse. Often it seems easier to suffer rape alone, than face the dismembering that comes with seeking support. It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place. This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled. The real question we need to be asking is not, Why didn’t she report, the question is, Why would you?"*

In January of 2015, I was in the second semester of my freshman year of college. In January 2015, Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted on the ground beside a dumpster at a Stanford party by Brock Turner.

In her memoir, Know My Name, she shares the events of and after the assault. I remember being engrossed by the trial when it was taking place in 2015 and 2016. I remember thinking that Chanel, better known to us at the time as Emily Doe, could have been any one of us, and was so many of us.

Victims of rape and sexual assault so often have their voices ripped from them. Chanel shares her story, sparing no detail just as she had to live through every horrific moment, and in doing so, reclaims her own voice. Her own identity.

The book includes her Victim Impact Statement which she read aloud at Turner’s (embarrassingly but, unfortunately, not unpredictably lax) sentence hearing. I remember reading this when it was initially released and crying out for her pain, for the pain of all of those who have been raped and sexually assaulted, and for the pain and fear so many of us feel knowing that if something happened to us and we lived to see the other side, we would be asked why we had so much to drink, why we were alone at night, why we were wearing whatever we chose to wear. That we would be painted as the antagonist for “ruining the life” of the “kind, polite” man who violated us.

This is one of the most important books I have ever read, and one of the most challenging. I have so much respect and appreciation for her vulnerability. Chanel is taking hold of the narrative and telling her story, without the manipulation of the judicial system or the media.

Chanel is a master in her storytelling, weaving in so much nuance and truly painting a picture of her journey while sharing with the reader the intricacies of her life - before, during, and after the events. I think everyone should read this book.

Incredibly grateful for people like Chanel Miller, speaking out even if her voice waivers. One of the last things she says is that she survived by being soft & it reminds me of Andrea Gibson's poetry,

"I decided I was too soft to last.

But then I decided to be even softer."

May we all approach the horrors of this world with softness, and more even more softness when it threatens to undo us. May we all speak out even with frog-filled throats.