Book Review: She Said

Reading this book was like watching the movie Spotlight; about journalists at the Boston Globe in 2001 who broke the story about the horrific abuses that the Catholic Church inflicted on not just the city of Boston, but across North America and the world. The movie is one of my favorites because of how journalism is portrayed as a necessary, urgent part of life in contemporary society.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement is a quick read but not in the sense of flipping pages simply to finish the tome. It's fast paced and hooks you into the journey that not only Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey take in unraveling that man's disgusting abuses, but the journey that the women who survived him took. Women who ended up breaking NDA's, who had never told their spouses, who were forced to reckon with the evil deeds Weinstein carried out.

Kantor and Twohey spell out the incredible amount of research and interviews they conducted over the year that they were both writing and uncovering more of Weinstein's crimes. They include email excerpts, phone call transcripts (some with Weinstein himself), texts, internal documents including a memo written by a woman who left Miramax because of the abuses she saw.

The book then transitions into background leading up to the testimony that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford gave at the Senate Hearings about Brett Kavanaugh. We get to hear from Dr. Ford herself and gain new sympathy for not only having to endure sexual assault, but the agonizing choice she made to testify.

The book ends with a group interview that the authors arranged with the women who survived Weinstein, Dr. Ford, and Kim Lawson, who launched a campaign taking on McDonald's for sexual harassment and lack of policies and protections for workers. It was deeply honoring to hear the women speak about life on the other side of going public with abuses suffered in silence.

In an era where facts are denounced by a man who is cut from the same sycophantic and narcissistic cloth as Weinstein and Kavanaugh, reading this book, however awful the subject matter may be, felt like salve on an open wound.

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