Question 1

What is the Brock Turner case and why did it receive so much attention?

Accepted Answer

In January 2015, Brock Turner — a white Stanford student and competitive swimmer — sexually assaulted an unconscious woman (Chanel Miller) behind a dumpster at a fraternity party; he was apprehended by two bystanders who intervened and held him until police arrived. Turner was tried and convicted in March 2016 on three counts of felony sexual assault. The case received enormous national attention because of the sentence: Turner's father wrote a letter to the judge arguing that a prison sentence was 'a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action,' and the judge, Aaron Persky, sentenced Turner to six months in county jail (of which he served three months) and three years of probation. Miller's victim impact statement, which she read in court and which was published in full by BuzzFeed, became one of the most widely circulated documents of the decade and was read aloud by survivors, politicians, and public figures across the country. Judge Persky was recalled by California voters in 2018, the first California judge recalled in over eighty years.

Question 2

What does Know My Name add to what was known from the trial?

Accepted Answer

Know My Name gives Chanel Miller's full story — her name, her life, her experience before and after the assault — in contrast to the two years during which she was known publicly only as 'Emily Doe,' the pseudonym used in legal proceedings. The memoir covers her childhood and family, her relationship with her boyfriend Lucas (who became her husband), her experience of the eighteen months between the assault and the trial, the trial itself and its aftermath, and the three years between the verdict and the memoir's publication. It is particularly powerful in its account of the non-trial aftermath: the way the public attention reshaped her identity, the experience of watching Turner's sentence be debated as if she were not present, and the process of reclaiming herself from 'Emily Doe' — a victim with no story, no name, no existence before and after the assault — to Chanel Miller, a person with a full life. The memoir is also about family and creativity: Miller is a visual artist, and the book includes her artwork alongside the narrative.

Question 3

How does Know My Name address the legal system's treatment of sexual assault?

Accepted Answer

Know My Name is in part a critique of how the American legal system treats sexual assault survivors: how the trial process forces survivors to prove their credibility while the defense attacks their memory, their sobriety, and their prior sexual history; how the sentence in Turner's case prioritized the defendant's future over the survivor's harm; and how the public discourse around the case reduced Miller to a symbol (of injustice, of survivor's courage) rather than a person. Miller is particularly acute about the experience of being a victim-witness in a trial where you are both central and powerless — your body is the crime scene, your testimony is evidence, but the trial is conducted by lawyers and decided by a judge and jury over whom you have no control. The memoir's act of reclaiming her name and her full story is itself a response to the legal system's reduction of her to 'Emily Doe': it is an assertion that survivors exist as full human beings before and after the events that the legal system classifies them by.

Know My Name Reading Order

Complete Know My Name Book List

Know My Name

Know My Name — Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Brock Turner case and why did it receive so much attention?

What does Know My Name add to what was known from the trial?

How does Know My Name address the legal system's treatment of sexual assault?

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