Book Review: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson - Entrepreneur Generations

I start every school year with instructions to my students that, on the first night of school, they send me an e-mail telling me about themselves. For my seniors, it has been a tradition for the last few years to read the best first-day-of-senior-year poem I can think of, Mary Oliver's "This Summer Day" in class and have the students respond to it in this e-mail. In the poem, a speaker is pondering a series of existential questions about the world, but seeing a grasshopper gives her all the answers she needs; the poem ends with the beautiful lines, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?"

And that's the prompt for the first night of school. I add some follow-ups, asking students to tell me what makes them passionate and what books or movies they love. This year, two students mentioned a book I had never heard of: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Another couple of former students have since put it on their Facebook feed as a recommendation.

This intrigued me a great deal, and I made it my goal to make it my next book. I like to read what my kids are reading, whenever possible. Of course, the onslaught of the school year makes it difficult to read, but in between podcasts I have been devouring at least a book a month still, albeit via Audible. I listened to Just Mercy most of the month of September.

Just Mercy is a memoir by civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, who has worked for decades on representing mostly poor, mostly black clients caught in our unjust justice system.

While I don't think it was a perfect work of literature, it is definitely worthy; Just Mercy combines the best of John Grisham's legal thrillers with the anger of Michelle Alexander's work and the optimism of Harper Lee. And it's the latter with whom the book shares an interesting connection; as anyone knows, I love To Kill a Mockingbird, and the backbone of Stevenson's memoir is a case that takes place near Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama (which is the town she fictionalizes for her novel). The case of Walter McMillian is an outrageous miscarriage of justice; he is a black man ludicrously accused of murder, and is sent to death row in what was a clear conspiracy among law enforcement officials and the judge. Stevenson's work on the case over the course of years eventually exonerates McMillian, and he structures his memoir to tell this story while interspersing dozens of other stories of unjustly, or disproportionately, incarcerated people.

McMillian had never read or heard of To Kill a Mockingbird or Harper Lee, but was having an affair with a white woman, and Stevenson doesn't let us forget the ironies here. After a meeting in Monroeville with the corrupt District Attorney who has put the innocent McMillian on Death Row, Stevenson walks out and sees a flier for the annual Mockingbird performance at the courthouse. He doesn't rip down the flier, but we get a sense that he wants to.

But Stevenson is too nice of a guy for that. And, if anything, that is one possible flaw of the book. Stevenson is certainly a hero in real life, but our most interesting heroes have flaws, and, since he's telling the story himself, we don't really see any. We don't get to know him as a person much, except for his tireless struggle against injustice. He is like a superhero without much of a backstory.

Stevenson is as moral as Atticus Finch and is telling his own story of continually battling our horrid justice system. The memoir will make you angry and, at rare times, hopeful. As Stevenson interspersed the other stories -- of teenagers who commit a crime when they are 14 and have no chance of parole; of men who are sent to death row even though what they've done is a clearly an accident; of mentally handicapped people in solitary confinement -- throughout the memoir, I found myself overwhelmed, and ready for him to return to the McMillian story. Some parts dragged. But I can understand Stevenson's predicament; he wants to encapsulate the abuses and inequities of our criminal justice system in his memoir, and has to bring in many different case studies to prove his case.

And he does, very convincingly. He's on the front lines of the institutional racism of our justice system, and tells us stories that are designed that make any person's blood boil. While I wonder what this book would have been like if a master storyteller or stylist had followed Stevenson for the years, given us a more nuanced portrait of who he is, I do think this to be a very worthy read.

In terms of teaching, if I still taught To Kill a Mockingbird, it is a book I would consider pairing with it, for it lets us know that we haven't come that far. Despite my instinct that this book's audience (like that book's) is perhaps for white people who are unaware of many of the abuses of the criminal justice system, it does seem to have struck a chord with several of my students, both present and former; many of my seniors are social activists, and they tell me that this book has inspired them, perhaps to go to law school and become the kind of activist lawyer that Stevenson is. So perhaps my instinct is just wrong about this. It's certainly something I would recommend to anyone who is interested in learning more about our justice system, about being a lawyer, about death row and capital punishment, about youth offenders, and about the constant struggle in our country for a better kind of equality.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2dwvkEC Book Review: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson - Entrepreneur Generations

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