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sarakomo 's review for:
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
by Jon Krakauer
2022: This is a BRUTAL read. Do not read if you're not in a good headspace for extremely graphic content about rape.
I'll back up a second here: rape is a brutal act. According to some therapists interviewed for this book, rape and war have similar impacts on one's psyche, and cause similar levels of PTSD experienced in patients. So by its own nature, any book that discusses rape is going to be brutal and graphic. But this was a very intense book to listen to, and I really had to check where I was listening to it. I listened to a couple chapters while doing some data entry at work, and I had to turn it off because I was so riled up.
Krakauer takes it a step further in this incredible piece of long-form journalism. There are extensive interviews with the survivors of sexual assault and full transcripts of the courtroom battles these women* had to go through. It was incredibly frustrating to hear about the seven hundred hoops that women who are raped need to go through, just to get their cases to TRIAL. It's absolutely heart-wrenching and horrible to listen to. It's even more infuriating when I think of all of the women in my life who have been sexually assaulted or raped, and those are only the women I know about. According to the statistics, there are plenty more that I don't know about.
One element that I find most fascinating is that Krakauer decided to name the book Missoula as opposed to Rape or something a little more general. Obviously, it was a conscious decision to name the book after the town as opposed to the act or college itself. Also, Krakauer spends a lot of the book discussing how this problem is not only localized to Missoula; rather, Missoula happens to be a very emblematic example of the issue of rape on college campuses. I choose to see that Krakauer wanted to highlight his frustration with the people in power in Missoula specifically (some of whom, *ahem* Kirsten Pabst *ahem*, are still in power today UGH).
In the end, the combination of my own opinions and Krakauer’s writing meant that I was SO FIRMLY on the victims’ side here. It was really incredibly hard for me to see any gray areas here (BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE) and every single one of these stories is awful. AWFUL. Teach better sex education, teach your kids what consent is, how to give it and how to take it away, and teach your sons NOT TO RAPE PEOPLE.
*Krakauer definitely acknowledges that it's not only women who raped, but the only survivors interviewed for this book are women.
I'll back up a second here: rape is a brutal act. According to some therapists interviewed for this book, rape and war have similar impacts on one's psyche, and cause similar levels of PTSD experienced in patients. So by its own nature, any book that discusses rape is going to be brutal and graphic. But this was a very intense book to listen to, and I really had to check where I was listening to it. I listened to a couple chapters while doing some data entry at work, and I had to turn it off because I was so riled up.
Krakauer takes it a step further in this incredible piece of long-form journalism. There are extensive interviews with the survivors of sexual assault and full transcripts of the courtroom battles these women* had to go through. It was incredibly frustrating to hear about the seven hundred hoops that women who are raped need to go through, just to get their cases to TRIAL. It's absolutely heart-wrenching and horrible to listen to. It's even more infuriating when I think of all of the women in my life who have been sexually assaulted or raped, and those are only the women I know about. According to the statistics, there are plenty more that I don't know about.
One element that I find most fascinating is that Krakauer decided to name the book Missoula as opposed to Rape or something a little more general. Obviously, it was a conscious decision to name the book after the town as opposed to the act or college itself. Also, Krakauer spends a lot of the book discussing how this problem is not only localized to Missoula; rather, Missoula happens to be a very emblematic example of the issue of rape on college campuses. I choose to see that Krakauer wanted to highlight his frustration with the people in power in Missoula specifically (some of whom, *ahem* Kirsten Pabst *ahem*, are still in power today UGH).
In the end, the combination of my own opinions and Krakauer’s writing meant that I was SO FIRMLY on the victims’ side here. It was really incredibly hard for me to see any gray areas here (BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE) and every single one of these stories is awful. AWFUL. Teach better sex education, teach your kids what consent is, how to give it and how to take it away, and teach your sons NOT TO RAPE PEOPLE.
*Krakauer definitely acknowledges that it's not only women who raped, but the only survivors interviewed for this book are women.