Speaking of trauma: MeToo memoir and testimonial agency

Although the declaration “me too” is often associated with the movement emerging from Alyssa Milano’s 2017 tweet, the MeToo Movement is more expansive in form and history than many realize, originating with Tarana Burke’s 2006 “me too.” Movement. In my dissertation, I take up three memoirs to clarify how first-person literary narrative transforms testimonial agency’s cultural role in the MeToo movement. I have found that testimony via memoir aligns with the movement’s aims to make injustice visible while challenging its currently limited representations of injustice, which too often center survivors’ perceived virtue, innocence, and worthiness of rescue. I demonstrate that by using memoir to embrace fractured subjectivity, prioritize innovation over objectivity, and cultivate empathy through vulnerability, survivors can facilitate awareness of trauma’s variability, build community, and inspire social and cultural change.

Roxane Gay’s Hunger, Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House are all noteworthy texts. When grouped together, they amplify each other’s unconventional and even confrontational stylistic approaches. I contend that these memoirists build upon public interest in the MeToo Movement; raise awareness about additional, often intersecting, forms of trauma; and engage readers in confronting their complicity in this violence. Most notably, I argue that by categorizing these works as MeToo memoirs, we can reimagine the archive of MeToo testimony, its messages, and the otherwise silenced voices it might encompass. Ultimately, we can come to understand that through memoir, survivors can refuse to forfeit credibility and simultaneously narrate trauma, embrace creativity, and celebrate artistry.