I didn't know if I was going to be able to read this. It's a memoir written by the woman who was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who got six months of jail time by a judge who didn't think he should be punished for a 'mistake.' I hadn't read the buzzfeed publication of her sentencing letter to the court, or looked for much information on the case beyond celebrating when the judge in the case was successfully removed by the voters in his county. But I felt like it was something that I wanted to read, if I was able to, and I'm so glad that I could.
The writing is beautiful, and painful, and shows how wide the gulf is between what you know before you're in the middle of a sexual assault trial, and what you know after: what you know about how the justice system works, and doesn't, and what you know about public opinion, and about having a voice, and living a life that's yours. It's the power of the repetition of how unfair our culture's expectations are for women, and their pasts, and what can be blamed on them, and the hypothetical future of the men, whose ruined futures are always referred to in a passive tense - his future was ruined - rather than an active - he ruined his future. A woman is raped, rather than a man raped someone.
It is a hard book to recommend, except that it's not, because it is beautiful and real and fairly devastating, and I hope very much to be able to read works by this author in the future. If there are other stories she wishes to tell, I want to hear them.
Grade: A
The writing is beautiful, and painful, and shows how wide the gulf is between what you know before you're in the middle of a sexual assault trial, and what you know after: what you know about how the justice system works, and doesn't, and what you know about public opinion, and about having a voice, and living a life that's yours. It's the power of the repetition of how unfair our culture's expectations are for women, and their pasts, and what can be blamed on them, and the hypothetical future of the men, whose ruined futures are always referred to in a passive tense - his future was ruined - rather than an active - he ruined his future. A woman is raped, rather than a man raped someone.
It is a hard book to recommend, except that it's not, because it is beautiful and real and fairly devastating, and I hope very much to be able to read works by this author in the future. If there are other stories she wishes to tell, I want to hear them.
Grade: A
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