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My thoughts

5/5stars Stunning. Beautiful. Powerful. Shocking. Brilliant. Thought provoking. Enraging. Inspiring. Emotional. Upsetting. Difficult to read. Life Changing. MANDATORY READ. This is easily the BEST memoir I have ever read. The way Chanel Miller articulates her thoughts, what a rape victim goes through, what an exhaustingly long the process of fighting a case, especially a rape case is. Chanel is such a beautiful writer, she managed to put into words what almost everyone of us knows in our heart. When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut? I cannot stress this enough, EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK. either you're gonna relate to the so many things happened to her or you're a part of the problem and need to reflect upon your actions. This book is gonna send chills down your spine, it's gonna make you really angry it's gonna make you cry out loud, you would want to just reach out and help them, hug them, tell them it's not fair and that they are not alone but most of all, it will remind you of the innumerable things wrong with this world/society and how the onus of proving/making everyone understand is always on the victim. Makes us rethink a lot of things. The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential. The correct way to read this book is to sit with a highlighter, have the audiobook on and annotate the hell out of your physical copy while listening to the audiobook. It's so powerful, every statement is worth highlighting, should be written out on billboards and placards. and once you are done, go back to your copy and re-read the highlighted parts over and over again, it might make your blood boil it might make you cry it might make you change your whole perspective of things. There was another line of argument that nagged at me: the suggestion that boys simply could not help themselves... 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... Their behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. CWs for the book: Sexual assault / rape, Dating violence, Suicidal thoughts, Body hatred, Mental illness, PTSD Please be cautious going into this book if any of these trigger you. They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability.