Amanda Knox, ‘Free’ or Not

You couldn’t miss the news coverage of Amanda Knox’s release from prison, especially if you were in Seattle. The news media descended on Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on October 4, 2011 in droves, as she returned to her hometown after spending four years in an Italian prison for a crime she didn’t commit, the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, in 2007. At a hastily arranged press conference at the airport, Knox managed to make a brief statement, saying in part, “I’m really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real.” Then, after saying she wanted to be alone with her family, she departed.

And seemingly disappeared.

I was surprised to learn on reading Knox’s new book, Free: My Search for Meaning, that she didn’t, as I’d assumed, make the media circuit (or circus) her next stop. But she didn’t. There was no sit-down with Barbara Walters to speculate about what kind of tree she might be. No recounting her story in an overstuffed chair while Oprah Winfrey looked on sympathetically. No social media posts (“First Latte Macchiato since freedom! #Yummy!”). No repeatedly dissecting the trauma of the previous four years for an endless parade of enquiring minds. Instead, she limited herself to releasing a book about her experience (Waiting to Be Heard, published in 2013), did some interviews in support of its release, but otherwise largely stayed out of sight.

It was certainly an understandable reaction. After four years of unjust confinement, didn’t Knox have the right to get back to living her own life, away from prying, voyeuristic eyes? But as Free also surprisingly reveals, escaping the confinement of prison isn’t enough. Nor is it as easy to adjust to your newfound freedom as you might think. As the subhead of one of the book’s sections puts it, “How I Failed To Reclaim My Own Life.”

The book’s first section reads something like a self-help manual, covering the time when Knox was in a physical prison. But as she points out — whatever your physical circumstances, aren’t we all in mental prisons in one form or another? The stories she presents in this section are based on how to survive incarceration, but they can equally apply to situations outside prison walls. Such as learning to boil food scraps to make a broth with which create something more palatable; “Everything has a purpose; everything is important,” is the advice to gain from that lesson. Unsurprisingly, there’s also a fallback on the principles of stoicism, of recognizing those areas over which you have control and which you do not. “What I could control was my mind — my thoughts and memories, my sense of myself,” Knox writes, elsewhere adding, “Any sustainable form of joy or peace must come from within.”

The book gets more interesting post-release, as it explores new terrain. Knox still found herself “trapped in a story despite my acquittal” (nor was the saga over; the courts later overturned her first acquittal and found Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty again in a subsequent trial, before a final acquittal on appeal in 2015). Films about the wrongly convicted (the documentary The Thin Blue Line, the feature film In the Name of the Father) focus on the injustice of the situation; once the wrongly accused go free, there’s an assumption that life can then go back to normal. But how do you go about making a life for yourself when the media has tarnished your persona  in front of the entire world?

The interviews Knox did do tended to focus on the murder and trial, with little information about what she was doing now. In Free, we learn she tried to carry on as best she could; she re-enrolled in the university, worked at a bookstore, did some freelancing for a local paper. But the negativity was never far away. A con artist, who knew just what emotional buttons to push to win her over, took her in.

Then there’s the roiling madness of social media, where you don’t have to be (in)famous to become a target; as Knox wryly notes, “Now we’re all experts at witch-burning.” Ah, but of course there’s a lesson to learn here too. Repeated vilification online made Knox realize the haters weren’t really attacking her, but her image: “They didn’t hate me, they hated the idea of me.” Remember that the next you get a slapback on your favorite social media platform.

Knox finally finds her purpose working with the Innocence Project, establishing a kinship with those who shared experiences similar to hers, as well as providing a voice for those unjustly incarcerated (an estimated 1 to 6 percent of prisoners in the US). This work also leads to the book’s most remarkable revelation; how her speaking at an Innocence Project conference in Italy led to her establishing a relationship with the very man got her locked up in Italy, prosecutor Dr. Giuliano Mignini. Recognizing that the media portrayal of him was as two-dimensional as hers had been, Knox reaches out in the hopes that their dialogue (via email) would get each to see the humanity in the other.

It’s an astonishing display of empathy that immediately makes you think: could I do the same? It was a thought that returned to me again and again while reading. The two share details of their personal lives (by this time, Knox had married and had the first of her two children), but also try to convey other insights into their personalities. Mignini advises Knox watch the film Una Vita in Gioco (“A Life on the Line”), about a prosecutor who allows a convicted man to escape in order to catch the real killer. Knox suggests he watch the “Darmok” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard teams up with a presumed adversary to fight a common enemy.

It’s like watching a chess match unfold, each player being careful not to overstep their bounds. While Mignini can’t bring himself to say he thinks Knox is innocent, he does go as far as to say “I tried to do my duty and I may have made a mistake.” It’s probably the book’s most important message; that moving past the demonization of “the other” allows you to move past your own anger and resentment — emotions that end up causing you the most harm.

You could say that Free is a book about getting past trauma. Perhaps more interesting in this case because of who the author is. But Knox’s story draws you in because her writing evokes your sympathy, not your pity. She’s ultimately just another person trying to get through life like the rest of us are. She’s also matured enough to recognize that in the end, her hardships helped her become the person she is today. “Part of being human,” she writes, “is confronting tragedy and getting through it.” Words for all of us to live by.