681
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #21,159 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
I read this in one sitting & my boyfriend is next
As a sexual assault survivor who was raped and going thru the court system at the same time as Chanel, the Brock Turner rape case was inextricably tied to the ups and downs of my own recovery. I was her and she was me as the court system churned and slowly tortured us both. To be able to read her statement and see it gain global attention helped me immensely to put words to what I had experienced.
Now I got to preorder her book, know her name, and support her. I read this book in about seven hours. It was like walking back thru the last 4 years of my own recovery in an alternate universe—Chanel’s universe. I found everything she said so grounding in its honesty. It was never unnecessarily graphic or gruesome for cheap shock value, but a rich and complex prose of how it is to be a woman and lose any girlish notions of safety or naïveté when sexual violence occurs.
This is as accurate a portrait of survivorship as one can find and there are millions of portraits just like her walking around you everyday as 1 in 5 women experience sexual violence.
Chanel is unique and beautiful and yet not unique as millions identify with her experiences. Please read and support this critical and multilayered analysis of her experience as she ties it to her childhood all the way thru several current political events of today.
My boyfriend supported me for wherever I needed to be emotionally while reading this book, sleeping on the couch to stay in the room with me til almost 4am when I was done. He knows I am a sexual abuse survivor and now he can read this book and the weight of trying to describe on my own what that’s like is lighter because Chanel has sacrificed yet again.
Lastly, I want to say this book was very healing for my sense of self esteem. It’s hard to explain why but hearing ways she has reclaimed herself thru the endless war with herself as a victim mirrors my fight also. Her validation journey helps me access more firmly my own validation. I cried more happy healing tears than sad tears. I will never forget this book.
