BRAVE

Starred review from February 5, 2018
Actress and director McGowan's disturbing and captivating memoir is a scathing indictment of Hollywood, which she calls a "cult," as well as a riveting account of survival. McGowan was born in Italy to American parents involved in a religious group called the Children of God and was physically abused by members of the group as a child. Her father eventually fled to the U.S. with McGowan, her siblings, and his second wife. McGowan, however, says that she continued to suffer from mistreatment and neglect; for a time in her teens she was hungry and homeless, living on the streets in Oregon. After a chance encounter with a friend with Hollywood connections, McGowan made her way to Los Angeles, where she won parts in such films as Scream and later landed a role in the hit TV series Charmed. Readers will find her graphic description of being sexually assaulted by a notorious but unnamed studio head to be repellant and raw. McGowan's struggle to endure in her career (she writes that she was blacklisted after the assault) leads to her fearless unveiling of the injustices and "systemic misogyny" that she claims are rampant in Hollywood. A chapter titled "Cult of Thought" is a call to action, promoting a new order in which women (and men) are valued for their creative differences. Frank and bold, this memoir is a resounding wakeup call to the entertainment industry and to society as a whole.

April 23, 2018
In a strong and urgent voice, actor McGowan clearly conveys her anger at Hollywood’s male culture and women’s acquiescence to second-class status as underpaid, easily manipulated, and violently abused sex objects. McGowan, recently heralded as one of the “Silence Breakers” chosen as Time magazine’s “2017 Person of the Year” and among the first to accuse movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, persuasively narrates her view of Hollywood not as an entertainment business, but as a propaganda powerhouse that primarily reinforces the norms of misogynist culture. Her blow-by-blow reenactment of her rape by Weinstein is full of ghastly details and very difficult to listen to—especially knowing it is McGowan herself who is reliving the experience. With McGowan as both writer and narrator, this audiobook forcefully connects readers, both women and men, to the #MeToo movement. A HarperOne hardcover.