Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Dear Readers, 

“Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go. What was taken.” Chanel Miller blesses us with her words, the words that perfectly encapsulate the feelings of being sexually assaulted. Speaking as a survivor, her words related to me on so many levels. And she’s right, the particulars of the assault aren’t the same, but the feelings after are all real. The shame, the confusion, the guilt, and (my personal favorite) the self blaming. 

Know My Name discusses the trial and real life of Chanel Miller, who is so much more than Brock Turner’s victim. She’s an artist, author, a sister, someone’s daughter. Her story brings to light so many aspects of the justice system that is meant to protect, but actually hurts, victims. “I didn’t know that money could make the cell doors swing open. I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that i he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.” I mean, wow. This moment, the moment when she realized the mountain she’d have to climb to get through this, was so heartbreaking. To be there in those moments, knowing that you don’t have many options, but to go through it alone or in front of the world. It’s an impossible choice to face, but somehow we all make it. 

“There was another line of argument that nagged at me: the suggestion that boys simply could not help themselves. As if he never had a choice. I have told each of my girls heading off to college: If you go to a frat party expect to get drunk, drugged, and raped. Don’t go to a frat party. You went to a frat and got assaulted? What did you expect? I’d heard this in college, freshman girls in frats compared to sheep in a slaughterhouse. I understand you are not supposed to walk into a lion’s den because you could be mauled. But lions are wild animals. And boys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were capable of controlling.” Boys and men are so often given the benefit of doubt when they sexually assault someone: “they’re just being boys”, “boys will be boys”, “how do you expect them to control themselves when you’re dressed like that?” The reasons they give to justify a man’s actions, rather than reprimand a boy that was never taught no. 

Know My Name is a heartbreakingly beautiful memoir that gives readers an inside look into the lives of victims. It teaches about the corrupt justice system, and how even when you do everything right, it still doesn’t always go your way. Miller allows readers the nitty and gritty details of her life following the assault, told so eloquently. 

-Sofia Villafaña