This book absolutely blew me away - what a complete tour de force. I have obviously heard many good things about it, but this book really surpassed my lofty expectations. I found myself highlighting passages every few pages, struck by Chanel's clarity and strength, and floored by how much her experience resonated with me. It's sad that sexual assault, and institutions that fail to adequately support sexual assault victims or advocate for justice for the perpetrators, are such ubiquitous experiences for women. One of my best friends was sexually assaulted while she was in medical school, and although the trauma of the sexual assault was awful and debilitating and long-lasting, she wasn't prepared for the trauma of reporting her assailant to the medical school. The medical school had an incredibly confusing tangle of systems and offices that were supposed to respond to allegations of sexual assault, and at every turn, these systems retraumatized, degraded, and invalidated my friend and her experience. Reading Chanel's memoir, I felt the same helplessness I felt every time my friend asked me in agony why the medical school couldn't just believe her, why they couldn't just keep her safe. But like my friend, Chanel displays an incredible strength - a strength she shouldn't have had to ever access. Chanel is unflinching in describing the consequences of her assault, the toll it took not just on her but on everyone around her, and how it manifested in ways much larger than on just her sex life and her sense of privacy and safety. She is dogged in her pursuit of justice, carrying on even though the process takes four years of her life and so much more away from her. She is clear-eyed about the ways in which the justice system fails victims, the way in which it protects assailants by allowing their memories to be faulty and their excuses to be flimsy, and how it is an uphill battle to get anwhere at all when reporting sexual assault. She holds onto the good in the world even when the system keeps bringing her down - the two Swedes who saved her (a reminder that we all have a responsibility to stop violence and injustice when we see it), her parents who cook her food and never judge her or ask her insensitive questions, her sister who is fierce and unyielding, her boyfriend who could have walked away or shied away from her pain but held her through it, the District Attorney who fights for her even when she gets reassigned to another department, the millions of people who write her letters and hold up signs. Blow after blow comes - having to go a trial at all, Brock's insulting testimony, the probation officer's dismissive attitude toward Chanel and subsequent skewed recommendation, the Judge's six-month sentencing (in which he basically says that the sentence would ruin Brock's life and pays zero attention to how what Brock himself has done has already ruined Chanel's life), Stanford's inability to take responsibility for the culture that allowed Brock to do such a thing. It's hard to read, but also amazing to see how Chanel pushes through it, how she keeps surviving, how she gives herself grace to fel it all and be a mess and just continue on. She depicts it all. She talks a lot, too, about how social change is often slow. That depresses me on some level, but it is also a reality that many activists have dealt with for many years, and we must move forward. I am deeply grateful to Chanel for sharing her story, for reclaiming her name. That impact statement ignited a firestorm that still rages, and I am in awe of her.