sashareads'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.

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.

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.

I have put off reading this book since it came out and really can't believe it's been over 10 years since Chanel Miller was assaulted. Miller's assault and how the media and courts handled this greatly impacted my college experience, and Know My Name showed that her experience was even worse than I imagined. The university did not step up or learn from this and disappointed us many more times in my time as a student.

Know My Name is a deeply personal recounting of a young American woman's experience being sexually assaulted on a college campus, enduring the media and legal attention that followed, and finding her own voice when everyone wanted to tell her what to do and feel. The details of Miller's ordeal are singular and compelling on their own, but her narrative and writing craft is the real gut punch. She brings you so near so that by the end of the book I felt almost parasocial with the author. Miller doesn't tell you how she thinks she's supposed to act or think but what she truly felt. I had to take so many breaks listening to her story because it weighed so heavy on my heart.

A key theme that Miller emphasizes and that stuck out to me is how time-consuming the criminal justice system is. Miller's village stepped up for her, and, even still, it was a very difficult process to put her life on hold time and time again and live in justice limbo. Portrayals of criminal proceedings like this on TV really make the process seem linear and tidy when it's incredibly capricious and illogical. There are intentional hurdles for all parties involved through the process in the name of justice, but somewhere along the way the most vulnerable were lost in the shuffle. I don't think I could have stuck it out like Miller.

Another theme that was executed so well was bringing her story in greater context of rape culture in the United States. This was not an isolated incident. Miller was assaulted in 2015 and this book was published in 2019. We've heard so many assault stories, we've seen so little justice, and the impact of this state of things is evident in our current political and cultural crisis. What the victim was wearing, the victim's sexual history, the victim's alcohol history- it's all on the victim to prevent their own assault. It's on the oppressed to excuse their oppressors. Reading this book in 2026 is exhausting but it is also triumphant.

This is an excellent book but is a very difficult read. The audiobook is especially powerful as it is read by the author, and if you can, I would recommend hearing her story from her voice. Please take care when reading this book and be aware of significant discussion of sexism, racism, sexual assault, school shootings, suicide, and mental health struggles. If you are interested to learn more about the experience of a sexual assault survivor before, during, and after, and the impacts on their loved ones and community, this is a powerful read. I look forward to reading more from Miller.

I have put off reading this book since it came out and really can't believe it's been over 10 years since Chanel Miller was assaulted. Miller's assault and how the media and courts handled this greatly impacted my college experience, and Know My Name showed that her experience was even worse than I imagined. The university did not step up or learn from this and disappointed us many more times in my time as a student.

Know My Name is a deeply personal recounting of a young American woman's experience being sexually assaulted on a college campus, enduring the media and legal attention that followed, and finding her own voice when everyone wanted to tell her what to do and feel. The details of Miller's ordeal are singular and compelling on their own, but her narrative and writing craft is the real gut punch. She brings you so near so that by the end of the book I felt almost parasocial with the author. Miller doesn't tell you how she thinks she's supposed to act or think but what she truly felt. I had to take so many breaks listening to her story because it weighed so heavy on my heart.

A key theme that Miller emphasizes and that stuck out to me is how time-consuming the criminal justice system is. Miller's village stepped up for her, and, even still, it was a very difficult process to put her life on hold time and time again and live in justice limbo. Portrayals of criminal proceedings like this on TV really make the process seem linear and tidy when it's incredibly capricious and illogical. There are intentional hurdles for all parties involved through the process in the name of justice, but somewhere along the way the most vulnerable were lost in the shuffle. I don't think I could have stuck it out like Miller.

Another theme that was executed so well was bringing her story in greater context of rape culture in the United States. This was not an isolated incident. Miller was assaulted in 2015 and this book was published in 2019. We've heard so many assault stories, we've seen so little justice, and the impact of this state of things is evident in our current political and cultural crisis. What the victim was wearing, the victim's sexual history, the victim's alcohol history- it's all on the victim to prevent their own assault. It's on the oppressed to excuse their oppressors. Reading this book in 2026 is exhausting but it is also triumphant.

This is an excellent book but is a very difficult read. The audiobook is especially powerful as it is read by the author, and if you can, I would recommend hearing her story from her voice. Please take care when reading this book and be aware of significant discussion of sexism, racism, sexual assault, school shootings, suicide, and mental health struggles. If you are interested to learn more about the experience of a sexual assault survivor before, during, and after, and the impacts on their loved ones and community, this is a powerful read. I look forward to reading more from Miller.