Survivor Memory and Rape Memoir: Chanel Miller’s
            <i>Know My Name</i>

Fernández-Morales, Marta

doi:10.1080/14484528.2023.2196367

Life Writing

2023

DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2023.2196367

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Survivor Memory and Rape Memoir: Chanel Miller’s Know My Name

Marta Fernández-Morales

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Sarah Polley’s take on the Me Too moment: adapting Women Talking to the big screen

Fernández-Morales,

Menéndez-Ménendez

2023

Adaptation

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This article discusses Sarah Polley’s 2022 film adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel Women Talking (2018), inspired by a case of mass rapes in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia, as part of the Me Too moment; a new zeitgeist that has modified the conditions of reception for survivor testimony. We examine it as an audiovisual product that amplifies the resonance of the original text and contributes to the current wave of feminist testimonial practices about sexual violence, constituting an instance of narrative activism that promotes social change. Through our analysis of the dynamics of storytelling in the film, we prove that Polley’s cinematic strategies place emphasis on the women’s lived experiences and points of view, distilling the words of the book to capture the key elements of their discussion (forgiveness, justice, obedience, trauma, and structural violence) and, rarely but significantly, deviating from the original text to achieve her goal of female-centred focalisation. While scholars and survivors have described the battle over the narrative in rape cases, Polley does not leave room for it. In line with #MeToo, the movie takes an ethical listening stand, presenting female testimony as valid evidence. The question at stake is not whether the protagonists have been raped by the men of the colony, but what they are going to do about it; and, by extension, what the viewers are going to make of their story as told by themselves.

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Sarah Polley’s take on the Me Too moment: adapting Women Talking to the big screen

Fernández-Morales,

Menéndez-Ménendez

2023

Adaptation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

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Survivor Memory and Rape Memoir: Chanel Miller’s Know My Name

Cited by 1 publication

References 12 publications

Sarah Polley’s take on the Me Too moment: adapting Women Talking to the big screen

Sarah Polley’s take on the Me Too moment: adapting Women Talking to the big screen

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