Paris: The Memoir

Hilton organizes a trip for her girlfriends to Ibiza in 2006. She loves the club Amnesia, where she hosts a yearly Foam and Diamonds party. It is at Amnesia that she first considers becoming a DJ. She understands how crucial the role of a DJ is at a club, and she asks questions about everything to learn the ins and outs of the trade. She starts working as the DJ at major festivals throughout the world. 

By 2017, Hilton has created billion-dollar brands. She has always kept things hidden, however, from the outside world. After being in prison, she finds it harder to keep the nightmares at bay, and she wakes up not being able to breathe and screaming. She begins to research Provo, and she learns that it is still in operation. She realizes that she is now one of the people who has done nothing about it. She worries that people on the online forums may remember her and hate her from Raps. She worries about losing all she has built if she tries to help, and she also worries about hurting her family.

Hilton wants to outgrow the woman with the baby voice and become who Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe did not live long enough to become. She has not even told Nicky about the abuse at this point. She agrees to be in an autobiographical documentary entitled This Is Paris, but she does not plan to tell the documentarian what happened to her in the schools. However, one night her documentarian is filming her as she prepares for bed, and Hilton tells her the story of her years locked away. She tells her that there are many survivors like her out there but none of them are being heard. The documentarian connects her with some other Provo survivors. The moment that is scariest to Hilton is when she tells her mom what happened. She says she could see her mother’s expression of disbelief, shock, and sadness.

Hilton explains that her path crossed with Carter Reum many times before they got together. She thinks that perhaps God would not let her see him until she was ready for him because she does not remember the meetings that he does. Her mother invites her to the Hamptons for Thanksgiving one year, and she goes. While there, her mother is invited to a dinner, and Hilton goes with her. She sees Carter there. The two talk over dinner and then make out outside afterward. He leaves to go to the city, and while her mother warns her against it so she does not look desperate, Hilton only stays in the Hamptons one more day before going to the city herself. 

Carter is the first person she has been in a relationship with who knows about her past. She and Carter spend a lot of time in quarantine together during the COVID-19 pandemic. The two decide to start in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Her documentary is released during the pandemic, and she has since gone to Washington multiple times to advocate against the “troubled-teen industry.” Hilton and Carter get engaged on her 40th birthday. She has started to say no to some projects because she and Carter know that time is more precious than money. The two go through many failed rounds of IVF. She believes women should take charge of their fertility, and she tells her reader not to put it off. She has always wanted two daughters and one son, but she believes that maybe her body and mind will never fully heal enough from her experiences as a teen. She and Carter take care of themselves now. She ends the chapter by saying that the hope is that by the time the book comes out, she will have a baby boy named Phoenix, a name chosen because phoenixes rise again.

Hilton says that she did not have space to tell all the stories she wanted to and that she understands that people like her younger siblings have experienced collateral damage from her celebrity status. She believes that “terrible things are terrible” even if good comes from them, and she believes that she and her reader may know each other better than they think they do (327). During her documentary, Hilton goes back into an Obs cell and cries because she realizes that she is no longer afraid.