Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

But the compliments didn’t feel like compliments when my body language communicated I didn’t want to be looked at, didn’t want to be spoken to. They didn’t feel like gifts when they were thrown at me or whispered so only I could hear. Every comment translated into, I like what I see and I want it. But I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I thought.

It’s as if she’d rather be a fly on the wall, and that every man that gave her a compliment was another man that stole her dignity

Kicking and screaming is not a sign you have lost your mind. It’s a sign that you have stepped onto your own side. You are learning, finally, how to fight back. Rage had arrived to burn the timidness away.

am not a burden. I am not limited, I am ever expanding.

#BeTheSwede.

I see you.

I thought of the man in the thick black jacket, sitting by the tracks in the foldout chair, hired to save lives. I realized, since I was seventeen, that was the job I wanted. The only difference was that I sat on a chair at home, writing the words that would get you to stay here, to see the value of you, the beauty of your life. So if you come on the worst day of your life, my hope is to catch you, to gently guide you back.

Of the goldfish we’d bring home, bobbing in plastic bags on the surface of the water. My dad explained they needed time to adjust to the temperature of the pond before being released. If such a small creature required such care, imagine the complex process a victim must work through in order to integrate back into daily life.

Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him. In

Erasure is a form of oppression, the refusal to see.

Most people say development is linear, but for survivors it is cyclic.

People grow up, victims grow around; we strengthen around that place of hurt, become older and fuller, but the vulnerable core is never gone.

It’s okay not to be okay.

I am years in the making, because I am my mother and her mother before.

book does not have a happy ending. The happy part is there is no ending, because I’ll always find a way to keep going.