Know My Name

My overwhelming feeling after finishing this book was gratitude. I felt so grateful to Chanel Miller and to all the women who somehow find the courage and capacity to speak out about sexual assault.

Miller writes skillfully and devastatingly about the details of her own highly publicized attack on the Stanford Campus. I was glad to get to know the human being behind the headlines and to read an honest and meticulous account of the long legal process that follows such a harrowing event. I devoured this approachable, relatable, fearless book quickly, unable to put it down.

In 2015, Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted outside a party on Stanford’s campus. The media gave her assailant a name and a backstory—Brock Turner, the Stanford Swimmer—while she was quickly reduced to a nameless victim—Emily Doe.

Her beautifully written memoir and her victim impact statement, which went viral when published on BuzzFeed, are a reclamation of identity. Despite its subject matter, Know My Name manages to be as hopeful as it is heartbreaking. This comes partly from her vivid, clear prose and partly from Miller’s own resilience.

Historically, rape victims haven’t told their stories, at least not in detail.

In Know My Name, Chanel Miller does a remarkable job of bringing the reader into her experience, before, during, and long after the rape, with vivid descriptions and remarkable honesty and authenticity. As the parent of a Stanford graduate, I was appalled to read about how the university handled this case, clearly more concerned about their own reputation and liability than the culture on campus that could allow such a travesty to happen.

The book is chilling, brilliantly written, and is a page turner.

I first heard Chanel Miller interviewed online and was immediately struck by how eloquently she conveyed her traumatic and difficult story. In a world where sexual assault is unfortunately still so commonplace, Miller’s words wield remarkable power, breaking through hackneyed reporting and stale responses, and forcing the reader to reflect afresh on how the global community views and responds to sexual assault.