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Her lucid memoir, “One Way Back,” describes life before, during and after her testimony that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at the best school.
By Alexandra Jacobs
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BACK: A Memoir, Through Christine Blasey Ford
“Laughter is indelible in the hippocampus. “
It sounded like a piece of refrigerator poetry that echoed through the structure of the Hart Senate’s wood-paneled office — Christine Blasey Ford’s original word describing her memory of being attacked at age 15 by Brett Kavanaugh, two years her senior, as her friend watched. (Kavanaugh, seeking confirmation from the Supreme Court, denied less poetically but “categorically and unequivocally” that he had done such a thing, brandishing old calendars as an alibi. )
Released more than five years after his congressional testimony in 2018, Blasey Ford’s new memoir, “One Way Back,” is a vital access to the public record — a lucid, if belated, rejoinder to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s maddening 414-page memo about the investigation. but prosaic. A Big Book like this has the latest step in the dizzying, if colloquially familiar, step through the spinning machine of American media: Once called the “spin cycle,” it now looks more like a clown’s car through the car wash.
Blasey Ford is a psychologist, teacher, and surfing enthusiast who relies heavily on the game as a metaphor for her ordeal. “You made me row,” he tells his lawyers at one point, as they advise him not to testify after weeks. of preparation. ” And you never, ever go back there once. You catch the wave. You erase if necessary.
It explains the difference between a beach break (“a quick and complicated trip”) and a point break (“slow, relaxing”), and offers insightful reflections on seaweed, the marine organism that can be destructive and nourishing to humans around the world. world. It swells. (“Just as it can set you back, it can also make you move forward. I just have to wait for a high tide. “) Dyeing the bottom of her hair blue to mark the summer break from her job as a coach, Blasey Ford even unknowingly predicted siren.
“One Way Back” is the story of how he swims away from the established force of the East, and then from a new and inexorable aspiration in its current. Living in the country-clubb suburb of Washington, D. C. , though she doesn’t yet have high school degrees, Blasey Ford’s parents vowed to provide their three children with a quality education.
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