Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Sexual assault cases can be hard to prosecute because often there aren't eye-witnesses or incontrovertible evidence. But in Chanel Miller's case her attacker was literally caught in the act and stopped by two bystanders and she was found unconscious, yet Brock Turner received the ridiculous sentence of just 6 months in county jail (only 3 when each day served counted double for "good behavior") and two years probation. Because of the huge backlash with this case California laws were changed and the judge who handed down Turner's sentence was recalled from the bench. But, from the moment she woke up in the hospital Chanel Miller's life was never the same. For 18 months she lived a double life - telling few people about her ordeal and trying to "go on with her life," but also being jerked around by the legal system. Court appearances changed at the last minute, she had to quit her job because she couldn't handle the daily stress and depression, trying to maintain her relationship with her boyfriend and family, etc. her whole life was put on hold. Then after being found guilty of three felony charges to have such a slap on the wrist sentence given was an even further slap in the face for Miller. Her victim impact statement (12 pages long) went viral after the sentencing and is what ultimately led to so many positive changes. But, the personal cost to Miller was also extremely high. She does an AMAZING job of telling her story and showing how hard it is for victims in the criminal justice system. I was appalled to find out in this book that she found out what exactly happened to her that night through reading the news - the police didn't even bother to tell her what happened. Just think about that for a minute. They NEVER TOLD HER WHAT HAPPENED. After reading her story you'll understand why more victims chose not to prosecute - not everyone can quit their job and be available at the last minute for a year and half, never mind going through the trauma of their assault over and over and over again while their attacker looks on and lies or tries to shame the victim. While this is not a happy topic or book it is extremely well-written and eye-opening. I put off reading it for a long time because this case had infuriated me when it was in the news and I didn't know if I could take more. But, this should be a must-read for everyone. Miller is also an amazing writer and tells her story well. While Miller wasn't a Stanford student, how the university handled this case is highlighted in the book. For a similar look at how universities tend to seriously botch sexual assault cases I would recommend Missoula by Jon Krakauer. Both are hard, but good reads.
*side bar - I looked up what Brock Turner is doing now. He's working a $12-an hour job and still living with his parents. I hope that is what the rest of his life looks like.*
Some quotes I liked:
"I didn't know that money could make the cell doors swing open. I didn't know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn't be taken seriously. I didn't know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn't know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn't know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed." (p. 23)
"What was unique about this crime, was that the perpetrator could suggest the victim experienced pleasure and people wouldn't bat an eye. There's no such thing as a good stabbing or bad stabbing, consensual murder or nonconsensual murder." (p. 49)
"They were deciding whether I'd make a good victim: is her character upstanding, does she seem durable, will the jury find her likable, will she stay with us moving forward. I walked out feeling like, You got the job! I did not want this job. I wanted my old life. But let him walk away? I could not let that happen." (p. 57)
"When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer is 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?" (p. 83)
"What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity if often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying." (p. 123)
"Throughout the legal process, I felt like I was always trying to keep up, to not mess up, learn court jargon, pay attention, follow the rules. I wanted to fit in and prove I could do whatever was expected of me. It had never occurred to me that the system itself could be wrong, could be changed or improved. Victims could ask for more. We could be treated better. Which meant my onerous experiences were not useless, they were illuminating." (p. 139)
"My DA would later tell me women aren't preferred on juries of rape cases because they're likely to resist emphasizing with the victim, insisting there must be something wrong with her because that would never happen to me. I thought of mothers who had commented, My daughters would never... which made me sad because comments like that did not make her daughter any safer, just ensured that if the daughter was raped, she'd likely have one less person to go to." (p. 152)
"I took my meticulously typed guidelines and encouragements, threw them in a drawer, gave myself a new mantra: fuck the fried rice. Fuck what you sipped, how you sipped, when you sipped with whom, fuck if I danced on a table, fuck if I danced on the chair. You want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Your whole answer was sitting with his shoulders low, head down, his neatly cut hair. You want to know why my whole goddamn family was hurting, why I lost my job, why I had four digits in my bank account, why my sister was missing school? It was because on a cool January evening, I went out, while that guy, that guy there, had decided that yes or no, moving or motionless, he wanted to fuck someone, intended to fuck someone, and it happened to be me." (p. 187)
"They tell you that if you're assaulted, there's a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don't have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process can't be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for." (p. 240-41)
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell (Books & Banter book club)
Most people aren't familiar with the name Virginia Hall, but she was an American who worked undercover in France as a spy aiding the Resistance movement against Germany during WWII. Her background in Maryland would not have seemed like the upbringing of a future spy. Her mother hoped she would marry money and help raise their family's social status. Virginia had other ideas - growing up in the 1920's she was drawn to the flappers and women's suffrage. She traveled to Europe during college and fell in love with France. But while abroad she suffered a hunting accident and lost one of her legs below the knee. Instead of going home to live as an invalid, Virginia first drove ambulances for the French army, then enlisted in the British Special Operations Executive service or SOE. While the SOE was brand new and could barely find recruits for this new spy organization, Virginia thrived and quickly made a name for herself within the organization. Even though over and over and over she was dismissed because she was a woman or over-ridden by a less experienced male spy, she continued to work hard and managed to work incredible feats during WWII. She helped other spies escape from prisons, she financed local resistance groups throughout France, helped train men in shooting and combat, supplied and planned out bombings and other attacks against Germany, and many, many other feats - all while never being caught despite a bounty on her head and several close calls. After WWII she returned to the US with a fellow American spy she had fallen in love with and ended up working for the newly created CIA. But, sadly she was never really taken seriously within the CIA because of being a woman and her disability of the lost leg. Sadly, she wasn't fully recognized for all she did during WWII during her lifetime. After her death she was more recognized for her genius in all the work she did for France during WWII.
While Virginia Hall is certainly a unique and important woman, I didn't love this book. I REALLY wanted to and I did love HER, but the book was so detailed and there were so many people and aliases that it was hard to keep up with the overall story. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Hidden Figures an AMAZING story of ground-breaking women who weren't well-recognized through history, but the book just got so bogged down in the details that it was hard to read. Overall, her story is amazing and worth knowing about but in my opinion the book is hard to read and overly detailed.
Some quotes I liked:
"For Virginia, though, since losing her leg, hiding her emotions and rigid self-reliance had become second nature. And all the terror and turmoil was better than feeling dead inside. She was doing a vital job, and doing it well. She had a role. Although capture was a real prospect every minute of the day, she had never felt so free." (p. 70)
"Thirteen, or one in three of the thirty-nine women SOE sent in to France, never came home. That compared to one in four of the four hundred or so male agents...Thousands of French resistantes would also pay with their lives. Their typical role of staying in one place to provide safe houses won them no glory but made them particularly vulnerable to betrayal. One in five of the women who took in people or supplies were executed for her trouble." (p. 131)
"In contrast to the celebration of strong-willed women under Wild Bill Donovan's war-time regime, the Father Knows Best thinking in the mid-1950s expected a model female to be an obedient blonde at home with the kids. To be childless and characterized as 'frank and outspoken' was a danger sign. Peace-time was slowly but surely imprisoning her." (p. 299)
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes (Evening Edition book club, re-read)
*Original Review*
When Alice Wright marries Bennett Van Cleve she is hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But, once she's back in Bennett's hometown of Baileyville, Kentucky she quickly realizes that small-town Kentucky life can be just as stifling and living with her father-in-law doesn't help things either. When a pack horse library is started Alice volunteers mainly to get out of the house, but the ladies she works with will change her life in several ways. Alice is initially intrigued by Margery, an independent woman who lives on her own and by her own rules. When Alice experiences a traumatic event she is able to turn to Margery and when Margery is arrested all the traveling librarians come together to help her. Each woman grows and changes because of working for the pack horse library and the families they are able to reach with books are also changed and empowered by the knowledge they now have access to. A beautiful story with some unforgettable characters that highlight a real program from the WPA that Eleanor Roosevelt created to promote literacy to rural areas.
I already love Jojo Moyes and this might be my new favorite by her. Some of the reviews criticize the end of the book (the trial) and all of the drama, but I felt like she did such a good job with the characters and the story that it just worked. Were there a LOT of dramatic events in the book - yes, but honestly nothing that seems way out of the realm of possibility for that place and time. Were some of the characters a little ahead of their time in their thinking - yes, but again change has to come from somewhere and if no one thought differently how would we ever progress? Did all the characters end up with a pretty happy ending - yes, but this is why this is fiction. Overall, I LOVED the book and especially Alice. I hope that Moyes might give us a sequel to this one down the road.
*Update to re-reading for book club*:
Still LOVED this book and even though I knew what would happen I still found myself just so caught up in the story I didn't want to put it down. I read it this time in about 2 sittings. I would love to see Moyes create a sequel to this one just to catch up with these characters a few years down the road. I think my book club is going to love this one.
Some quotes that caught my eye this time:
"Margery didn't speak much. She was utterly uninterested in the slivers of gossip, veiled or otherwise, that seemed to fuel the women at the endless teas and quilting sessions Alice had sat in on up to now. She was uninterested in Alice's appearance, her thoughts or her history. Margery went where she liked, and said what she thought, hiding nothing behind the polite courtly euphemisms that everyone else found so useful...Margery behaved, Alice realized with a jolt, like a man." (p. 37)
"A certain kind of man looked at God's own land, she thought, as she drew closer, and instead of beauty and wonder, all he saw was dollar signs." (p. 82)
"'You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?' Margery said finally. 'Ain't the hurt. It's that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it don't matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It's when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that.'" (p. 198)
Women in the Kitchen by Anne Willan
This unique book looks at 12 women cookbook authors from the 1600's to today. Each chapter highlights that woman and gives a brief bio and information about her cookbook(s) and how they impacted the culture of that time. Then there are a few original recipes with a modern update added. It was a quick read and I liked that the author updated the recipes especially for the older cookbooks.
A quote I liked:
"Julia had a clear vision of what she wanted [for Mastering the Art of French Cooking]: 'This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children's meals, the parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyments of producing something wonderful to eat.'" (p. 179)
Lessons From Plants by Beronda L. Montgomery
This is a unique book that explores how we can learn from plants and how they survive and thrive in uncertain environments. Beronda Montgomery is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and her love of plants was cultivated by her parents from a young age. In school she developed a love of science and math that she paired with her love of plants to go into academia after college. This short book highlights 6 attributes of plants that could translate to people and how we can better thrive in our environments. The book is more scientific than I expected, but not un-readably so. I personally felt like it was a little too science-focused and the last few paragraphs of each chapter that highlighted the lessons for humans seemed a little forced in some cases. I did learn a lot about plants and how adaptive and advanced their systems are. If you're more interested in the science of plant adaptations this would be a great book, if not maybe pass. But, it is short and there is a lot of interesting scientific information about plants.
Some quotes I liked:
"...whereas there are still controversies about, and in some instances resistance to, seeing plants as intelligent, there is increasing consensus that plants, and other organisms such as ants and bees that lack highly developed brains, can exhibit intelligent behaviors that allow them to respond as individuals or in community to a dynamic environment." (p. 12)
"Researchers have made the remarkable finding that some plants may adjust their competitive or collaborative behavior depending on whether their neighbors are close kin or not. Such behavior is well known in animals and is thought to have evolved because kin share genes." (p. 41)
"After all, as [Robin Wall] Kimmerer explains, 'science asks us to learn about organisms. Traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them.'" (p. 106)
The Beginner's Guide to Growing Great Vegetables by Lorene Edwards Forkner
This gardening book is divided into three sections - getting started, get planting, and edibles A to Z. In Getting Started there is great info about gardening zones, the basics of gardening/growing - sun, water, soil, seeds, etc. The Get Planting section outlines things to do/work on/plant in your garden by month January through December. I really like that in each month there are special notes on what can be done depending on your growing zone. There were a LOT of really great tips in this section. The last section edibles A to Z goes over specific vegetables/herbs and tips for planting, growing, and harvesting that item. In this section something SUPER helpful is a list of planting and harvesting months by growing zone. There are also a few pages of resources and suggested reading at the end too. Overall, this is a really well done book about vegetable gardening. I would highly recommend this to a beginner gardener - or someone more advanced as you can always learn more.
A Knock at Midnight by Brittany K. Barnett
Brittany Barnett grew up in a small town in Texas with a large extended family nearby. Her parents were teenagers when she was born and didn't stay together, but she grew up with love from both sides of her family. Unfortunately in the early 90's her mother got into drugs and subsequently spent time in jail. Brittany went on to college and worked in finance, but the years of her mother's drug use and incarceration forever marked her. She had always thought about being a lawyer, but went into finance first. Eventually Brittany went to law school intending to be a corporate attorney. But, while in law school friends and family members started reaching out to her to see if she could help their loved ones who were in jail with life sentences due to mandatory drug sentencing laws at the time. While researching for a class Brittany stumbled upon Sharanda Jones's story - a young mother with two small businesses and no criminal background who was sentenced to life in prison for a drug charge. Aghast at Sharanda's story Brittany reached out to her and ended up starting to help her while she was still a law student. Brittany eventually helped several people, including Sharanda, get either reduced sentences or clemency for their crimes. After several years of working in corporate law and doing pro bono work on the side, Brittany quit her corporate law job to work as a full time advocate for drug offenders with life sentences.
Like Bryan Stevenson, Brittany Barnett never intended to do this kind of legal work, but fell into it. In her case, mainly because of her own experience with her mother, drugs, and incarceration. It is honestly amazing at all she was able to do while still in law school and as a new lawyer. The book details 7 people who's cases she helped change for the better. Also, similar to Just Mercy this is an eye-opening and infuriating book, but still filled with hope. I don't know how Barnett and Stevenson do this kind of work for so long without falling apart. While Stevenson focuses more on how unfairly the law is applied particularly to black people, Barnett focuses more on the insane federal drug charges and mandatory minimum sentencing. Several of the people highlighted in this book got longer sentences or harsher charges because they wouldn't (or couldn't) flip on others - more of a revenge sentencing for not "helping" the Feds more, even when they didn't know any info to give. This should be required reading for everyone. And Brittany Barnett is right up there beside Bryan Stevenson in my mind for how tirelessly she works for the people who are victims of our criminal justice system.
Some quotes I liked:
"There was just one thing that didn't make sense: the sentences. The drug cartels had imported truckloads of drugs across the border into the United States, dozens of tons of pure cocaine. I'd seen pictures of the stuff, piles of it. Yet when the judge in the case finally read their sentences out loud, I couldn't believe my ears. The sentences of the men who had organized and run this multimillion-dollar international drug ring ranged from six to twenty-five years in prison. Nearly all the men I'd seen paraded in and out of Judge Atlas's court for crack got sentence twice that for far less quantities." (p. 84-5)
"The legal term is 'relevant conduct,' but 'ghost dope' is so much more accurate that even law professors use it. Basically, it refers to the calculation of drug quantity based entirely on testimony, often uncorroborated, in the absence of physical evidence. Prosecutors seek maximum quantities in order to trigger mandatory minimums, and ghost dope is a great way to get that number into the stratosphere." (p. 129)
[In talking with a client about the prosecutor in his case] "'Is she still at the U.S. Attorney's Office?' [he asked] 'You won't believe this. She's not a prosecutor anymore. She works as a consultant for opioid pharmaceutical companies.' 'So, she's a drug dealer now.'" (p. 182)
"Sharanda's case had seemed incredible to me when I came across it, but what I had learned in the past six years was that there were tens of thousands of Sharandas whose lives were being wasted in prison as a result of the War on Drugs." (p. 218-19)
[Speaking with a federal judge who resigned his position (a life long position BTW) over ridiculous drug sentencing] "'The three least culpable guys in that conspiracy charge - of which Chris was one - went to trial. They thought, and rightfully so, that more than ten years for their low-level involvement was absurd. But, they're the ones with life sentences. All three of them...There was no justice present in the courtroom that day. The only way to explain that sentence was as an act of revenge. And I wasn't in the business of revenge. Or at least, I did not want to be. So I left the bench.'" (p. 295)
"Thousands of people were still laboring in prison under the dark cloud of outdated drug laws. Of the nearly 185,000 people in federal prison in 2018, 46.2 percent were there for drug offenses. Almost half of the people in federal prison serving life without parole had been convicted of a drug crime, and 80 percent of them were people of color." (p. 302)
Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran
In 1975 Phuc Tran and his family immigrated to America and ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania. His family may have been the only Asian people in the town at the time and they often struggled to understand American culture while learning English as well. Phuc just wanted to fit in and knew he would never be one of the effortlessly cool kids. So, he decided that he'd rather have nerd cred than no cred. Later he found punk rock music and the punk/skating scene and found the people he could really relate to. And what better way to fit in than with the people purposely trying to NOT fit in?! In high school Tran realizes that he can have both worlds - academics and punk. He falls in love with literature and starts to see how great literature explores the bigger questions of life. So, he continues to try to figure out what the answers to those questions are for him as he tries to navigate life in his family, his high school, his town, and the wider world.
I didn't know what to expect with this book, but I was blown away by the writing. He is such a great writer and I was immediately enthralled in his story. He had a tough childhood and probably didn't even realize how tough until he was an adult looking back. I was also interested to see in the author bio in the back that he is a tattoo artist and owns a tattoo studio. I would REALLY like to see a sequel book about how he got into tattooing in the future. Definitely a unique memoir and I would highly recommend it.
Some quotes I liked:
"I realized that there was some prestige in being smart, or at least appearing smart. Sounding smart was not the same social Teflon as being good-looking or athletic or funny but hell, if someone could give me some props for being good at school, I would take nerd props over no props at all. I got zero props for being Vietnamese or bilingual or a refugee." (p. 4)
"If you're a Vietnamese kid in a small Pennsylvania town and you're getting your ass kicked because you're Asian, what does this mean? You go punk rock. Like, you go FULL PUNK. Get the leather jacket. Shave part of your head. Wear ripped-up flannel. Bleach your hair...Now the rednecks don't want to kick your ass because you're Asian; they want to kick your ass because you're a social freak. Being a freak because of my weird clothes and hair was a respite. These were things that I had chosen...Fighting rednecks because you were a punk was far better than fighting because you were Asian, and fighting with allies was far better than fighting alone." (p. 6)
"Television had a Jungian archetype of perfect parenthood that was the yardstick for my parents. And in reality, I had a father and mother from Grimms' Fairy Tales: parents willing to beat, forsake, and terrorize children. My parents pretended to abandon us. I believed that they had left. And then I discovered that they had lied. Which was more monstrous?" (p. 104)
"My father loved the library because it was a safe haven for him - no missed cultural cues, no bigoted insults from his coworkers, no glaring reminders of what was lost. All patrons of the library were pilgrims to the oracle, all seeking the same thing: knowledge. And in their pursuit of the same thing, they were all equals." (p. 145)
"Could you love reading and still love punk? I had assumed that you couldn't be a skate punk and geek out on books, but Philip had changed that perspective. I had wanted to ensure that I would fit in, and suppressed my nerdiness as anathema to punk rock. But Philip had obliterated that premise in an instant with a copy of The Stranger. Maybe this was my opportunity to be regarded as someone different, more interesting and complicated than the Vietnamese kid or a skate punk. It began here - a borrowed book because of a song. This was my invitation to be something more complex. This small, seedling moment would grow into my opportunity to change and flourish, to branch out with new ideas and shear away old assumptions." (p. 177)
"It was easy to spot racism when it shaved its head, drew a swastika, and wore Doc Martens with white laces. But what about when it came to your coworkers? Or during the college application process? The police? Your parents? You and your friends who said the n-word without flinching? Who were the racists now? I suspected the answer and didn't want to say it aloud...It would be a long time before I could begin to understand how big racism was and how it affected me, but I had to take the first step, to acknowledge the reality of life, to tackle the hardest truth if I wanted to fight it. We all were the racists." (p. 261-62)
Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot by Mo Isom
I feel like the title of this book is misleading. I personally feel that the Church has dropped the ball when it comes to speaking about sex - to all ages, not just teenagers. And I also think Christian "purity culture" can be very damaging to young women. But, in this book Isom talks more about her own personal story and basically how she fell into bad behaviors because the Church didn't really talk to her about her own worth to God and the Biblical reasons behind purity (not just sexual purity either). While her story is sadly common, I don't think she gave a lot of real advice on how things could be taught better in churches today. I was also surprised to find that at the end of the book she's only been married for 3 years - I guess I expected a little more longevity from someone offering advice on sex in the godly view of marriage.
She also had several passages that seemed to imply modesty would prevent sexual assault/lust which just further blames women for men's behavior. Biblical purity is not just for women - it's for EVERYONE. And there was an off-putting analogy about are you a Walmart girl or a Dolce & Gabbana girl - basically cheap and easy vs. classy and pricey? I kind of see her point, but again this puts all the onus on women. I thought she was brave to tell her personal story, but otherwise I didn't feel like this would really help anyone trying to do better addressing these issues with their own children or in their church. She also brought up that her father had pornography in the house and she was exposed to it (accidentally) at a young age, but she never addresses did her mother know about this? Her father committed suicide - did it have anything to do with an addiction to pornography? etc. Overall, not great in my opinion other than she did a good job of pointing out that so many of us fail to recognize our inherent God-given worth and try to find validation from others (often in a sexual way) instead of through God.
