Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey To End Gender Violence

Hill’s new book defies boundaries by bringing together elements of memoir with law, social analysis, and polemic—delivered with the precision of a powerful lawyer and the vulnerability of someone who became a target of merciless media scrutiny after testifying to being sexually harassed by now–Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In telling her story and situating it in the context of 1991, as well as the context of 2021, Hill (social policy, law, and women’s studies, Brandeis Univ.) demonstrates the importance of acknowledging that problems once thought of as individual are in fact “cultural and endemic.” Hill draws attention to the imbalance of power that is prevalent throughout American society, especially within the legal system itself. Alongside her own experiences and her response to the Me Too movement, Hill offers a penetrating analysis of the racism, sexism, and mistrust that Black women face in the U.S. She calls for an end to gender-based violence and asks readers to put forth the effort to enact societal change.