Ashlynn’s Reviews > Know My Name > Status Update

“When society questions a victim’s reluctance to report, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down. Victims do not have the time for this. Victims are also students, teachers, parents, who can’t give up work or education… This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented and verbally mauled.”
Page 288

288

“I thought of the two things she would say every time I visited, ‘You have pretty dimples! And huge feet!’ Her grandma’s feet were bound. Four-inch feet, and now mine, size 91/2. Every generation, we get a little more free.”
Page 326

“No matter how formidable or self-assured I might become, I will always be a tadpole. I believe that’s what being a victim is, living with that little finicky, darting thing inside you. Most people say development is linear, but for survivors it’s 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. More than becoming a frog, I believe surviving means learning to live forever with this trembling tadpole.”
Page 307

“What I never say out loud is that rape makes you want to turn into wood, hard and impenetrable. The opposite of a body that is meant to be tender, porous, soft. Sometimes I’m too angry, seething after reading a rape story, ‘I need to slice a dick off.’ Sometimes my desire fluctuates, dips to depletion. I wouldn’t notice if I didn’t have a partner, but once you shrug off affection for the sixth time something’s amiss. Sometimes he’ll gesture for me to rest my head on his chest, he just needs touch, simple touch, to know we’re still connected.”
Page 263