Leigh Gilmore is one of the most innovative scholars in autobiography and gender studies. Tainted Witness develops her inquiries to focus on women's testimonies. Gilmore demonstrates and accounts for the ways in which women's gender and race are read in relation to (or instead of) their words in order to produce doubting judgments regarding their capacities to speak the truth (tainting their witness). Such judgments often have negative consequences for the pursuit of justice. She considers the notion of an “adequate witness” (2), noting that, to be judged sympathetically, women's testimony may require an uplifting narrative which generates identification and empathy. Gilmore asks “what we owe her” in relation to unsympathetic witnesses, and argues for the importance of understanding testimonial accounts “unbounded by the strictures of testimonial protocols” (152). This may enable displacement of the legalistic “beyond reasonable doubt” as a criterion which often works to taint women's witness, and suggests more broadly that extralegal frameworks and forms for women's testimony (such as literary texts) can also produce forms of justice.

Tainted Witness focusses on a number of case studies. It begins with the ways in which Anita Hill's testimony was discredited in Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment case. It then examines the ways in which Rigoberta Menchu's testimonio (1983) was (mis)read as untruthful, before exploring varieties of neoliberal life narrative and analysing two examples of “unsympathetic” witnesses (Nafissatou Diallo, who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape, and Xuela, narrator of Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother (1996)). This is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study, underpinned by feminist, legal and philosophical theories. I would single out for particular praise Gilmore's discussion of the cultural work done by phrases frequently heard in discussion of rape and harassment cases: “he said/she said” and “nobody knows what really happened” (6–7, 140–43), and the superb work she does in historicizing the “long memoir boom” by showing how it is indebted to “Hill's testimony, as well as the rise in the publication and circulation of first-person literature by women of color, including Rigoberta Menchu, and queer writers” (86).

Some issues with this study deserve itemization. I believe that they are primarily caused by the book's wide-ranging focus and the presentation of Gilmore's arguments. My suspicion is that there has been a decision to minimally use footnotes and detailed discussion of critical work, in an effort to reach a wider readership. While laudable, this creates problems. Key concepts for Gilmore, such as “testimonial networks” (1), go undertheorized and underexplained, with the result that they seem nebulous, even accepting that Gilmore's focus on how testimony “moves” and judgment “sticks” is necessarily somewhat intangible. Also vital to this work are Lauren Berlant's notion of “intimate publics” and Judith Butler's “public square”; these too are undertheorized and, in the latter case, belatedly introduced.Footnote ¹ While this is likely to frustrate academic readers, Gilmore's beautiful, if often challenging, writing style is not particularly accessible, whether engaging extensively with scholarship or not. Indeed, it is clear that Gilmore herself encounters difficulties talking about how testimony travels. She occasionally resorts to unhelpfully odd or abstract metaphors, such as the suggestion that the “I” can be understood as a “magnetic figure” (14) or the bizarre notion of Oprah tempted by an “angel/devil tableau” of Elizabeth Gilbert and James Frey (107).

While I do understand and applaud Gilmore's use of case studies and selection of examples, this causes difficulties in managing source material. This is particularly revealed in the discussions of the Anita Hill and Diallo court cases, which share a number of issues. Points are made repetitively, and there is questionable focus on tangential details (such as Gilmore's preoccupation with what she calls – with justification – Thomas's “callous view toward pain” (55)). There are many missed opportunities to closely analyse text (testimony itself, or commentary generated by it). This is a shame, as some of Gilmore's most powerful critique is founded on close readings of literary texts, particularly the discussion of Kincaid. This is where Gilmore is most confident and accomplished in her analyses. Tentativeness, by contrast, is evident in the conclusion, which discusses the #BlackLivesMatter movement in a rather superficial manner, providing little more than a brief history of the movement's origins and aims. The conclusion largely leaves the question of why this movement did not receive more attention in an earlier chapter.

There is more work to be done to test and develop Gilmore's claims by broadening her intersectional focus, particularly extending to age and class. Nonetheless, this is an admirable, highly exciting work which offers rich new ways of theorizing life narrative in its numerous forms.