Chanel Miller

Chanel Miller is through with pretending, said Concepción de León in The New York Times. For years, even close friends didn’t realize that she was a renowned victim: the young woman who was sexually assaulted outside a 2015 Stanford University fraternity party by star swimmer Brock Turner. When her lacerating victim statement went viral a year later, drawing 18 million online views, her anonymity was so complete that her own therapist urged her to read it. For Miller, maintaining the secret was useful for a while. But by the time she began writing her new memoir, Know My Name, she knew she couldn’t fully recover while keeping her experience hidden. “Shame grows when it’s in a contained space,” she says. “As soon as you let a little bit of air in, the shame loses its power.”

Know My Name is a powerful read, said Emma Brockes in TheGuardian.com. Miller, now 27, is a vivid writer, and bitterly funny about the absurdities that a victim of sexual violence endures: the dehumanizing rituals of a hospital’s rape processing suite, the questions that suggested being passed-out drunk made her to blame for Turner’s assault. She knows that many people want her to say she’s OK now, but she instead insists on her right to not be OK. She still suffers panic attacks, and bouts of anger and despair, and she’s learning that they may not end. “Ultimately, this experience will always be a part of you, but you get to choose how it serves you,” she says. “I get to use my anger as fuel, I get to use my grief as strength, and my ability to empathize with anyone who’s going through this; I’m thankful for the ability to do that.”