#20minutes-Just Mercy

Amazed.  Shocked.  Naive.  Ignorant.  Hopeful.  These all describe how I am felt after finishing the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.  I was not intending to read this book as it's outward similarities to To Kill a Mockingbird seemed too heavy for the beginning weeks of summer.  However, I lost my first choice in my car, so there I was.

You cannot miss the obvious similarities to one of my favorite novels, To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sure enough, it's right on the cover: "Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so...a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields."  Chapter one is even titled "Mockingbird Players".

Yet, there is so much more to this nonfiction book than the comparison to TKAM.  Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who started the Equal Justice Initiative, and he has the stories to prove it.  He started his legal practice, according to the back cover, "dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned, and those trapped in the furthest reaches of our criminal justice system."  The book focuses on one of his biggest cases with Walter McMillan, but throughout the book, he weaves in a lot of other stories of clients that have been treated unfairly by the justice system.  Besides stories, Stevenson includes jaw-dropping statistics of the injustice within our systems.  I personally had no idea of some of the horrific facts that come from present day.

Here are reasons why I think Just Mercy would be a good book to bring in to any curriculum (with a big focus on TKAM):

1. The stories are true and more current in JM  than TKAM.  The main story of Walter McMillan takes place in the 90s, but there are smaller, side stories all the way up to 2013.  Take the timeliness and then add the shockingly, true stories, and I was hooked.

2. Bryan Stevenson tells the stories of each individual client in a way that makes you feel connected to the client.  You hold on to each story thinking something good will happen, but page after page, you see justice fail.  Right when you think there is no good in this world, Stevenson pulls you back in with a breath of hope.  Only to throw you right back in to the data that may show our nation still has a ways to go in improving our justice system.

3. I am in no way saying that this should replace TKAM.  Absolutely not.  I personally would not teach this as a literature circle text unless I had students who were very interested in the topic and strong readers.  The vocabulary in this book is tough, and there were so many times where I caught my self rereading pages to figure out what just happened.  I found my thoughts wandering so much more frequently as the topic of death row and justice kept making me think beyond the text.  BUT holy cow could you use passages in this text to show students the idea of justice and how it fits in our world today.   Ideas:

• A compare/contrast activity with a fictional text (TKAM)
• An informal socratic seminar by using a short story from the text to discuss
• Philosophical chairs where you create controversial questions based on the passages (I would help create the questions if you want!)
• A silent discussion either on posters around the room or with a notebook pass about one of the stories
• Use a passage as a model text to show how you interact/mark/annotate. 

This text brings a lot of opportunity for nonfiction reading paired with fiction reading.  I'm in love. 💕

4. Stevenson is a big believer in hope, and this is a concept that I have become more and more interested in.  Stevenson states, "But Havel [a great Czech leader during the era of Soviet domination] had said that these were things they wanted; the only thing they needed was hope.  Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather 'an orientation of the spirit.'  The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power.  That kind of hope makes one strong" (219).  Let's show this to students.  Let's give them hope in a time of their lives when they are struggling to grow up.  The other "hope" quote I loved from Mrs. Jennings (a woman who took in one of Stevenson's clients), "We've all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us.  I know that some have been through more than others.  But if we don't expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed" (126). Stevenson and many others, like Mrs. Jennings, show the reader countless times that it is so important to not give up no matter what situation you are in.  Stevenson is faced with the impossible in many of the cases that he takes on, but to see him put every ounce of his energy in to helping others is so inspiring.  If he can accomplish what he shows in the book, what can we accomplish as an individual?

I'm going to stop there, but I'm sure I am missing more reasons of why this book should be included in any curriculum.  I strongly encourage the English 9 teachers to pick this book up (shout out to all of you crazies teaching the freshmen next year!), or you can definitely borrow my copy!  I will even steal (shhhh!) my copy for one of your classroom libraries; it is much more appropriate in an English classroom than an intervention room.

Okay, on to my guilty pleasure First and Then.  Gretchen has made me even more excited to read this!

#20minutes