Book Review: Readme.txt

Image: the cover of the book is a purplish tinted mix of grays and blacks making up a form of digital camo. Across the top and large white letters is Chelsea Manning across the bottom is the title of the book. In the center is a small icon of a document file and underneath in small white letters says a memoir.

Readme.txt gave me a new understanding of Chelsea Manning's life. I knew of her story, I had followed things in the news, I paid attention to her twitter, and I got to see some of her finally being able to exist as her true self. However, like most things that make their way into the public eye, and like all things that don't, they can become hidden over time under the barrage of information pummeled at us on a daily basis.

It's easy to lose track of time and tragedy in this kind of environment. It's difficult to imagine the individual moments of someone locked away and tortured, especially the further away one gets from the event being reported upon. This is the sort of fate that affects all prisoners. Even those who have the love and dedication of family and friends are often left separated from any sort of connection. The system is designed this way. In the case of someone like Chelsea Manning, add on top of that the horrors of secret prisons, being a trans person in prison, being accused of treason, spying, and other ridiculous crimes, being kept in solidarity confinement even worse than that of other prisons, and being thrust into the public eye while the government controls the narrative as much as possible, and you have a recipe for an even more extreme forms of torture.

It was interesting to read about Chelsea's journey from being a nerd who was good at computers to being a whistleblower. Her naive innocence, especially when she described how she never thought that she would get the punishments she did for releasing such important information, is an important part of this story. She wasn't some sort of anarchist weaving her way inside the military to sneak out bits of information for exposure. She was someone who saw more and more horrific things that didn't match with the message that she was given about the heroics of the US military.

The book is also an in depth look at what it was like for many LGBTQ people during don't ask don't tell. In Chelsea's case, it opened the door for more abuses, including from superior officers, that couldn't be reported without outing oneself. For all of the criticisms of the military, it shows that any law in any area that marginalizes lbgtq people is going to do harm far and wide.

I also found how Chelsea talked about being trans in the prison system to be refreshing in our current climate. Anti-trans people often accuse us of playing dress up or saying that gender roles and clothing are what make us trans. Chelsea's fight against the prison system to get hormones and proper transgender care rather than a small concession of slightly longer hair or something is an important one. Yes, it is true that there are many people who identify as trans for a variety of reasons and express themselves in different ways. But, for those of us who need to transition medically, legally, etc, being trans isn't simply being allowed to wear a different cut of clothing. At the same time, in an oppressive authoritarian system, those little concessions also matter a great deal. Wrap all of that up with the dangers that trans people can face in prisons and you get a complicated story which I think Manning navigated in this book well.

Overall, this book was an interesting glimpse into more of Chelsea's life that made me even more glad that she's finally out.

This was also posted to my Goodreads.