I saw the above photograph yesterday in the latest issue of Bookforum—Christine Blasey Ford sitting surrounded by the letters of support she received after offering her testimony at the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh, despite Ford’s powerful testimony about the nominee’s drunken attack on her, went on take a seat on the Supreme Court and voted to overturn Roe V. Wade.
A day or two after Ford’s testimony I had seen a social media post asking that letters of support be sent to her university address. I used a postcard (I can’t remember now, was it a black-and-white one of Toni Morrison? Audre Lorde?). But what I had seen of Ford speaking on television stayed with me and in the days that followed I thought more about an account a friend had told me and put it in the novel I was then writing, A Time Outside This Time. Here below are the relevant paragraphs from the proofs I have on my computer (the section begins with a critique of the academic language used in psychology texts—the narrator’s wife, Vaani, is a psychologist with a fine, subtle intelligence):
I understand from my wonderful editor at Knopf that the paperback editions of A Time Outside This Time as well as My Beloved Life will be released together in a few months. But I’m here to tell you that Christine Blasey Ford’s just-published memoir is called One Way Back. In her review in Bookforum, Moira Donegan writes: “Ford’s story guides readers to an uncomfortable awareness: that #MeToo, for all the spectacle and moral edifiction that it was supposed to provide for its audience, demanded something much darker and costlier from the women at its center.”
Hackles raised. Tears fought. My own history with rape, as well as your words, have stopped me in my tracks. Thanks for this remembering of her terrible plight against K's winning his seat on the court. It's worthy. We all need reminding. There is so much overwhelming injustice (even within our own Supreme Court) that it's often hard not to feel there's no hope for change. Thanks for your writing, Ami.