NON-FICTION: Know My Name, by Chanel Miller

For this event, I've chosen Chanel Miller's memoir from 2019. I've been wanting to read this one for a while. Miller writes about her experience being sexually assaulted by then Stanford University athlete Brock Turner in January 2015, as well as the aftermath and subsequent court case. I want to give a heads-up on this one as it involves sexual assault and will be an intense read. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50196744-know-my-name

"When it was published in 2016, Miller’s letter stunned readers with the clarity of her voice, acuity of her rage and expansiveness of her empathy towards those in need of support. Her story offered other victims a shared language; Miller recalls receiving thousands of supportive letters from women recounting their own stories. Her memoir has this same mix of the intimate with the communal, placing her own pain against a backdrop of shared suffering. At the end of Turner’s sentencing, she feels as if she has climbed a high mountain of justice, a climb that many fellow victims have not been able to scale. Exhausted, she imagines looking down, 'where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly … What could I tell them? The system does not exist for you.' Against a system that leads victims to recede into their own spheres of private suffering, Know My Name creates a space where this pain can sit and receive support from others." — Rebecca Liu, The Guardian

*This event will be held at the Kitava location on Solano Ave in Albany. They have lots of allergen-friendly food options. You can find their menu here: https://www.kitava.com/kitava-albany-menus/

Please reach out if you have any questions. Thanks!