Books to read Blue text = a clickable link. To highlight pictures please click themRemember Heather Shaner? Heather gave her unruly clients books to read. A few weeks ago I wrote about her. Heather is the unconventional ‘court appointed Federal public defender in Washington DC' who stood for about 30 low level Trump supporters being tried for the attack on Capitol Hill. Heather wanted these male rural Republicans to know things other than what they knew. She gave them book titles, film titles and invited them to join libraries. One of the books Heather urged on them was Just Mercy. I looked it up. This I found
This I also foundIn addition, the website of Stevenson's own organisation, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) states that 'Mr. Stevenson has received over 40 honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford University.' He's no mean man, is he? Reading itNo matter how brilliant the prize and award list is for book or author, the real test of a book comes by reading. So read it I did. This book is horrible. I'd never want to live in America after reading this book. I couldn't bear to do so. Just Mercy is about the lack of mercy – institutionalised lack of mercy. I read about person after person imprisoned on death row, especially in Alabama; imprisoned in many cases for crimes of which they were innocent. Or if they were guilty, very often they had penalties more severe than their cases warranted. They were black. They were poor. They had had terrible upbringings. One of these was Walter McMillian, who was convicted of the 1986 murder of Ronda Morrison, an 18-year-old white girl. McMillian always maintained his innocence and it is his story which drives the book. He first comes to a reader's attention in Chapter 1, reappears throughout the book, is finally released in Chapter 11 and dies in the Epilogue. MacMillan's story is interrupted by chapters detailing various other parts of Stevenson's work. One shocking chapter, titled God's Children, features, for instance, 14 year old George Stinney executed by electric shock which went horribly and cruelly wrong. BrokenChapter 15, Broken, is for me a key chapter because it reveals the soul of the author and says things which could make a difference to all of us. It comes when EJI has grown to over 40 staff and is overloadingly busy. Stevenson and his colleagues are exhausted and overwhelmed by the agony all around them. They feel broken. But then Stevenson says: 'All of a sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn't want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vunerable.' One of a kindI was slow coming to Just Mercy which was copyrighted 2014 – nine years ago. Had I not written about Heather Shaner I might never have discovered it. That would have been a pity. No wonder both book and author have collected awards. Just Mercy is one of a kind. Horrifying and terrific at the same time. After we've read it, I wonder if we will acknowledge our brokenness and draw from that to benefit others? □ John McInnes Friday 29 September 2023 Publication details of copy I used: Just Mercy, ebook, Scribe Australia, 2015. Now also available: young person's edition; audio book read by the author; film. Reactions from New Zealand reading groups: Click here. ##########
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