Speaking Truth to Power [Hardcover]

I actually looked over my shoulders, when I glanced through this book, before buying it, because I had decided that so many people around me demanded my opinion of this tragedy.

When I watched the hearing, while I sat next to others, for whatever reason I waited to say whether or not I believed Dr. Hill. I wanted to process it all, in the privacy of my own space.

Watching her, on many levels I related to her. Yet, I had some unanswered questions that reading this book, along with other books that reference this tragedy helped me to make my own decisions about what happened.

Dr. Hill put a voice to many of the challenges that I had, as professional African-American woman, who wanted to speak about many issues that too high a number of African-Americans refused to communicate. Before reading this book, I wanted to be free to speak against some socialized rules that I grew up with, that are common in African-American families. But, I wanted to communicate that I am proud of being African-American.

And as a result of reading this book, I gained tremendous courage to fully live my life's mission, which is to guide women and girls to earn trust in themselves.

To this day, as a journalist, if an editor argues against Anita Hill, I refuse to write for that paper.

Thank you, Dr. Hill.

Anyhow, I thought that after the hearings were over, Anita Hill went back home to Oklahoma and went on with her life, the ordeal forgotten. After reading this book, I had no idea that Hill endured further harassment from students at the university where she taught, faculty, the media, and people who never knew her nor she them. It was downright outrageous and disgusting.

Hill writes eloquently about her roots, her upbringing in Oklahoma, her years at Yale Univ. Law School, and her job at the EEOC where she worked under Clarence Thomas and the harassment she endured from him, her subsequent career change all the way up until the hearings. It's all interesting and worth reading.

Anita Hill is the catalyst for which the laws of sexual harassment have changed and claims for which are now taken very seriously. It is very unfortunate that she had to take such torment and emotional brutality as a result of it, as if harassment from Thomas wasn't enough in and of itself.

That Thomas is now sitting on the highest court in the land for life, knowing the content of his character and demeanor, is indeed disturbing. But I hope that deep inside he is sorry and feels the utmost remorse and guilt for his mistreatment of Anita Hill and all his other victims.

The truth always come out - maybe not today or tomorrow - but eventually it does. Thomas knows what he did, and the world knows what he did despite his "categorical" denials.

It is my hope that Anita Hill finds the peace and happiness she deserves. Her life will never be the same, as she herself admits, but unfortunately almost all movers and shakers's lives were and are forever changed.

An insightful and honest book, I recommend it highly.