Book Reviews

I wouldn't have considered myself a big Gabrielle Union fan, but this book was all over the news so I bought it. Long review short: I can't recommend this book enough. I laughed, I cried, and by the end, I truly felt like Gabrielle and I were friends. (Talk about parasocial...) 

This book, which is probably better described as a collection of essays and stories, covers a lot of topics from Gabrielle's life from childhood to adult celebrity. She describes her experiences with light-heartedness at times, self-deprecation at times, and the utmost seriousness at times. She takes accountability for former bad habits, like being jealous and a bully. This book is actually one of the reasons I became interested in celebrity autobiographies and reflection pieces because Gabrielle was so candid. She is honest to the point that it would be clearly detrimental to her public image if she wasn't so obviously reformed and matured. 

One of the chapters that shocked me and centrally changed Gabrielle,was her essay on her sexual assault when she was 19 years old (Chapter 7: Code 261). She details everything about that experience, from the day it happened to the resulting aftermath in her life. *Trigger Warning - I will discuss the details next.

Gabrielle was working at a Payless shoe store and that summer, a former Payless employee at a different store had been robbing Payless stores. Management had positively identified him in videos and had a detailed description of him - including a picture of his driver's license. Still, Payless did not inform employees that robberies had been taking place or implement additional security measures. (Namely, they didn't have cameras or a panic button at her store.)

One night, a Black man came in while her and a white coworker were cleaning up. Gabrielle's instincts told her to run, and she had two opportunities to do so, but she ignored it soasto not be "rude" to him and to avoid feeling responsible for any negative implications of showing a white coworker a strong fear of a Black man. This was an insightful place to add commentary about how women are trained to accommodate everyone around them, even in the face of danger. 

The man robbed the store at gunpoint then took both girls to the back room, where he forced them to remove their clothes and raped Gabrielle on the floor at gunpoint. She temporarily dissociated and only came back to full consciousness when she realized he set the gun down. She grabbed it and shot, missing him and forcing a physical confrontation. Eventually, the man bashed her head in and got the gun back. He said he was going to kill her but quickly decided to leave. (Mind bogglingly, even given this context, some people still asked about what she was wearing.) The man robbed another store and assaulted another female employee even more severely a week later. After being tracked and hunted for a week, he turned himself in. Eventually, he agreed to a plea deal of 33 years in prison for all his crimes.

Gabrielle details her struggle with PTSD and anxiety immediately following the assault. (Those carry through her life.) Gabrielle didn't leave her house unless necessary for a year, constantly moving from the fear of one random act of violence to another. Even after two decades, some public interactions still trigger her anxiety, which can make life as a public figure really challenging. Fortunately, soon after her attack, Gabrielle sought therapy, a rape crisis center, and a survivor support group. It was in her recovery in a UCLA survivor group that Gabrielle made the startling realization that she was a "lucky" survivor of rape. Some studies have estimated that 90% of rapes perpetrated against college-age women are acquaintance rapes. Gabrielle describes suddenly feeling grateful her rapist was a stranger and she was able to get him convicted; many of the other survivors still had to see their rapists in classes. Gabrielle credits a lot of her recovery to the women in her support group at UCLA sharing burdens with her and showing her that her life still has potential for good things, and even happiness. While they still experience trauma and struggles, a community of peers can model new paths forward for those at earlier stages of recovery. This essay is an excellent example of the importance of options for varying survivor needs.

Part of Gabrielle's book dedication is probably the best endorsement I can give you to read it:

"I dedicate this book to those who have been humiliated and wanted to hide away forever. To those who have been broken and superglue wasn’t enough to help. To those who have felt frozen in fear and shame. To those who have kept smiling as their throats were closing up. To those who thought they had all the answers but realized they were sorely ignorant. I see you."

Trevor is a really eloquent writer and orator. This book explores heavy themes like apartheid (racism, segregation, slavery, etc.), domestic violence, and the cycle of poverty in an almost light-hearted way. Among many other things, it's a memoir that uses stories from his childhood to talk about the true nature of living under apartheid at its end and being a South African with mixed heritage. (His mother was a black woman from the Xhosa tribe and his father is a white Swiss-German man.) At the time he was born, sexual relationships between black and white people were illegal. The title comes from this quote in the book: "The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations — I was born a crime."

I really enjoyed this book and so did a lot of other people. The New Tork Times and NPR, among many others, put it on their lists of the best books of 2016. I highly recommend listening to his audiobook as well, if you've got the time. There is a decent amount of historical and political context added into or around his stories, and he includes a lot of African words to illustrate his points. (Trevor makes an interesting point that language both unites and divides us.) He fluently spoke Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Tsonga, Afrikaans, and English during his childhood and listening to him speaking in language makes parts of the book more memorable.

Trevor is really close to his mother and I mostly want to focus this review on the stories of violence Trevor experienced through his mother's relationship, but in an interesting bit of foreshadowing near the beginning, he included a story about feeling hurt and betrayed when his dog gave his neighbor a lot of affection. At that time, his mom taught him something he says he still reminds his friends today: we do not own the object of our love.

*Trigger warning - domestic violence.

Trevor's mom was first hit by Abel, his stepdad, just about a year after his half-brother was born. Trevor recalls really liking Abel when he was the guy that worked at the auto body shop, but feeling concerned when his mom and Abel married - he could feel he and his mother were losing their independence the longer she was with Abel. It's also important to note that Abel was Zulu, kind of the main opposing tribe of his mother's family's tribe, so Trevor and his mom were culturally different (she was a smart, headstrong woman and didn't fit the more traditional expectations of wives from Abel's culture.) Abel often came home drunk and a fight with Trevor's mom one night escalated into hitting her twice. Trevor's mom took her kids and went directly to the police station, but they refused to charge Abel, and actually had him take the family home. Since Trevor's maternal grandfather beat his grandmother often, his grandma did a lot to convince his mom not to leave his stepdad. (Often, victims and perpetrators of intimate partner violence were also witnesses to it in their childhood, and that's a pattern continued here.)

Abel started hitting Trevor a few years later. Trevor's mother hit him, but it's interesting that Trevor distinguished the difference by intention - he truly believed his mom hit him out out of her love for him, whereas Abel enjoyed it, or at least was flat or indifferent about the reasons for hitting him. I think the gradual increase in violence was predictable and made partially okay by his mother's actions, or inaction, when faced with violence herself. Abel started hitting Trevor's mother. It became so frequent that she eventually moved with her two younger sons into a shack in the backyard. (Trevor had already left the house. His mother feared for his safety when was old enough to start defending himself. Abel, like many abusers, had a sensitive ego so not acquiescing to him was dangerous.) Trevor really struggled understanding why his extremely strong-willed, disciplined, devout Christian mother wouldn't just leave her abuser. I think his mom was being protective of her kids. She knew that Abel would pursue her if she left him and the justice system was not often on the side of a Black woman. 

Eventually, Trevor's mom left Abel and remarried, but not long after he surprised them at her house while drunk. (Trevor was essentially estranged from his mom by then, so he wasn't there. Being a witness to abuse of someone he loved was too painful for Trevor, and he created space when his second brother was born.) Abel had a gun and intended to kill the whole family. Trevor's mom jumped in front of her sons and took a bullet to her body while she got them to run out. Abel tried to shoot her in the head at point-blank range but the gun misfired. She got to her car with the older son but Abel shot her in the head while they were driving away. He was going to kill himself, but Abel's family member convinced him to turn himself in. Abel pled guilty to attempted murder and served no time in prison. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think Trevor's mom knew this was a foreseeable outcome of leaving him and that's why it took time to build her resolve, despite the immediate danger her sons faced while living with him.

Miraculously, the bullets missed all of Trevor's mom's major arteries and organs. There weren't even any bullet fragments left in her body. She was able to leave the hospital within 4 days. 

One of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much is that the perspective of the impact of the intimate partner violence came from a person that truly loved and respected the survivor and knew her before that relationship. It's kind of a unique point of view to read from in intimate partner violence. This is a perspective that I think we need to keep in mind in all proceedings related to domestic violence. The circle of impact is wide, but for those closest to a survivor, especially children, the impact is deep. This book was a reminder of that.