I DNF Unbound by Tarana Burke.

I DNF Unbound by Tarana Burke. The author really turned me off.

I really really wanted to like this book. I got about halfway through the audio book read by the author, but I couldn't finish it. She was the founder of the Me Too movement. Strike one was when the #metoo hashtag went viral, Burke got super upset and went into a spiral. Why? Because Me Too was her own brand identity regarding survivors of abuse, and when the tag went viral basically she worried that it wouldn't be "her thing" anymore or associated with her. In some part I kinda understand that, she'd been using it for a decade before it went viral, but also, she comes across as kinda selfish for getting so upset about starting a global movement because it got out beyond her ability to monetize.

Second, and probably the worst so far, she describes an event as a teenager where a girl in her friend group slept with her BF and she responded by beating the girl to a bloody mess including smashing her face so badly "a wire from her braces was poking out through her lip"

I get that Burke was likely victimized as a child herself, and has the rest of the book to explain how she grows from this, but this was such a black mark on her character it turned my stomach. It gets worse when Burke explains that the girl she brutalized HADN'T slept with her BF but was quite possibly raped by him!!

Third strike, she describes several accounts of being in school and correcting teachers who are instructing the class on racism in America, basically calling them out for being wrong because Burke knew more about racism than they did and she just seemed very full of herself.

Nobody is perfect, most memoirists smooth over their down flaws, and in some way Burke being open about these things is daringly honest. But holy shit it made me dislike her enough that I don't want to finish the book.