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Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice beyond courts and high-profile cases. She reframes #MeToo as a breakthrough moment within a longer history of feminist thought and activism.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction: The #MeToo Effect
Part I: Narrative Activism and Survivor Testimony1. The #MeToo Effect: From "He Said/She Said" to Collective Witness
2. Buildup: Survivors in Public, Trump, and the Women's March
3. Breakthrough: #MeToo Silence Breakers
4. Backdrop: Antirape Lineage from Harriet Jacobs to Tarana Burke
5. #MeToo Stress Test: The Kavanaugh Hearings
Part II: Narrative Justice and Survivor Reading6. Reading Like a Survivor
7. #MeToo Storytelling
8. Consent Before and After #MeToo
Conclusion: Promising Young Women--What We Owe Survivors
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Leigh Gilmore is professor emerita of English at the Ohio State University. She is the author of
Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives (Columbia, 2017),
The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony (second edition, 2023), and
Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation (1994), as well as coauthor of
Witnessing Girlhood: Toward an Intersectional Tradition of Life Writing (2019). She contributes regularly to WBUR's
Cognoscenti.
Summary
Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice beyond courts and high-profile cases. She reframes #MeToo as a breakthrough moment within a longer history of feminist thought and activism.
