Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

In this powerful debut, Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, depicts her experiences as a survivor of sexual assault and an advocate for the “necessary work” of collective healing. As a woman who is “hardwired to respond to injustice,” she reflects on her path from being a young, Black girl in the Bronx to becoming a globally recognized activist. “There is no here without where I was,” Burke writes, “stuck and scared and ashamed, a place I remained until the need to care for someone else’s shame saved me too.” In evocative prose, she reflects on the way her trauma fractured her sense of self—“I found space for this secret in the vast cemetery I carried in my soul”—and is equally forthcoming about her moments of courage and uncertainty (“This would be a disaster if it went viral,” she remembers thinking just before she saw her hashtag in “hundreds of thousands of tweets”). Most memorable is the intense love and respect that comes through in her recollections of the young people who have trusted her with their own painful stories. Intensely moving and unapologetically frank, Burke’s fearless memoir will uplift and inspire the next generation of survivors, advocates, and truth-tellers. (Sept.)