Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

I have been privileged and protected in my small life. I came from a working class family with no significant problems. I was able to find a college to accept my less than stellar grades. I married a man who went into the ministry. We had challenges but we had what we needed. No one in my family was ever in jail, no one was targeted because of color or religion.

I knew about the great faults in American society and my heart was in the right place. I spoke out when I could, boycotted, tried to be educated, tried to pattern the right behavior. But I had no idea of the depth of my ignorance until reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

The stories Stevenson shared crushed me, like a pressure on my chest. I read a chapter at a time, then had to step away and let the horror and despair subside. For Stevenson reveals an American justice system not only without mercy but that was corrupted on the local level for political gain.

In the 1980s, fear of rising crime was used by politicians who proposed stricter and harsher prison sentences, three-strike laws, and treating children as adults. As prisons filled to overcapacity, for-profit prisons arose and they lobbied for harsher sentences to keep their business profitable. The death penalty was reinvigorated, even if the methods employed were cruel and unreliable.

Caught in the cycle are innocent men and women, children relegated to life in prison where they are sexually abused, the mentally handicapped, and women who raped by men unpunished for their abuse of power.

Bryan Stevenson was drawn to seek justice for those on death row, especially the innocent without legal counsel. He started the Equal Justice Initiative and Just Mercy is the story of his work and the people he tried to help. It is a cry for reform of the justice and prison system. And a cry for mercy.

The book has won numerous awards and prizes. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times called it, "Searing, moving." It is a disturbing book to read, especially because upright citizens who demand punishment have little idea of who they are condemning and what they are condemning them to. We have instituted "vengeful and cruel punishments" justified by our own suffering. "But simply punishing the broken--walking away from them or hiding them from sight--only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity," Stevenson writes.

There is one story that brings hope. A prison guard who showed extreme racial prejudice learns more about the prisoner he has treated with contempt, and he could connect his experiences to the prisoner's. It changed the guard's mind and his life.

Stevenson is the mouthpiece for the stories of unjustly imprisoned men and women, allowing readers to understand their walk. May we learn compassion and press for a just system, showing mercy to those broken by racism, mental illness, poverty, addiction, abuse, and trauma.

As Stevenson reminds us, we are all broken people.

I received a free book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Just Mercy
Bryan Stevenson
Spiegel & Grau
$16 paperback
ISN: 978-0-8129-8496-5

Brilliant Reimagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest: Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Contemporary novelists reimagine Shakespeare's plays in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I have read Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl (The Taming of the Shrew) and Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time (A Winter's Tale) but have not yet read Howard Jacobson's Shylock is my Name (The Merchant of Venice).

I was particularly eager to read Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood's versions of The Tempest, because I'd read so many glowing reviews, and because I had read and enjoyed Atwood's last book The Heart Goes Last (my first time reading this author, which amazes me).

Hag-Seed is definitely my favorite in the series so far.

I won't concentrate on a plot synopsis since so many other reviewers have already done that. I'd rather address what aspects of the novel particularly impressed me.

I loved Hag-Seed's play within a play structure, so Shakespearean, where all the contemporary characters in the novel correspond to the original play and perform The Tempest while creating a live theater situation where the audience becomes a part of a play based on the Tempest.

I'll try to explain this again.

The protagonist, the brilliant and original artistic director Felix, was about to direct The Tempest when he was disposed from his job as artistic director by self-seeking men. Felix retreats to a primitive cabin in the middle of nowhere, his only companion the memory of his deceased daughter Miranda. After many years he takes a job under a false name and becomes Mr. Duke, literacy teacher in a local prison, teaching inmates Shakespeare through performance of the plays. When Felix learns his old enemies are now Ministers who want to end the prison literacy program he decides the time has come for him to take his revenge. The Ministers come to the prison to see a video of The Tempest performed by the inmates. But Felix and his prisoner actors plot a live theater experience that will bring his enemies under his power.

The intricate structure of the novel knocked my socks off. Additionally, as Felix teaches The Tempest to the prison inmates the reader is also educated about the play's themes and characters. And then at the end of the book the inmates offer reports on what happens to the characters after the events of the play. They offer original insights, such as Prospero's lack of oversight allowing Antonio to usurp him; a questioning of the strength or weakness of goodness; the theme of second chances; and theorizing that Prospero is Caliban's father. I also liked how the minor characters, the prisoners enrolled in Felix's course, have distinct personalities and back stories that relate to the roles they are assigned.

"The last three words in the play are 'set me free'," says Felix." Felix has identified nine prisons within the play, and so we understand how Atwood conceived of Hag-Seed.

Readers of this series don't have to be experts on Shakespeare's plays to enjoy the novels, although an understanding of the plays heightens the enjoyment. If you are rusty on the play, you can skip to the author's synopsis at the end and read it first.

I received a free e-book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hag-Seed
Margaret Atwood
Hogarth Shakespeare
Publication Oct. 11, 2016
$25 hard cover
ISBN:9780804141291

For an interesting follow-up to this book read Shakespeare Changed My Life by Dr. Laura Bates, telling how teaching the Bard to prisoners impacted their lives.

Multiple Listings by Tracy McMillian

Life is good for Nicki. She has an incredible job in real estate that supports her and her son Cody in a solid upper-middle class lifestyle. Her boyfriend Jake is young, handsome, daring, and attentive. She and Jake have started building a restaurant and have put money down on a beautiful new house.

Then Nicki's life unravels. It starts with her father Ronnie showing up at her door, newly released from prison and in need of a place to stay.

Ronnie and Nicki speak in alternate chapters, allowing the reader deep insight into their perceptions and emotional life. Ronnie must come to terms with his past and how it has affected his relationships. He really wants to be a better man. But it's hard when you know just how to read and manipulate people--especially women who find him irresistible. Nicki has her own baggage with a dad in prison and a disconnected mother turning tricks for drug money. She chooses the wrong men and does not understand her teenage son. What she has to learn is that Ronnie is just what she needs in her life.

Multiple Listings is relationship author and screenwriter Tracy McMillan's first novel. The characterization is great and the plot moves along quickly. Early on I thought I knew how it would end, and it did end that way, but there were interesting twists to keep up my interest. It can get preachy, especially with Ronnie wanting to use his hard-earned wisdom to save the world. But I bet a lot of women will find the lessons valuable and affirming. We want Ronnie to make it outside of prison and for Nicki to allow herself to trust again. Cody is pivotal, for he badly needs a man to understand him and Ronnie knows what he is thinking even before Cody knows what he is thinking.

How long before this book becomes a movie? I wouldn't be surprised.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"Inspired by the author's life and imbued with wit and profound insight into relationships, Multiple Listings speaks poignantly--and often hilariously--about the ties that bind families of all types together."

Multiple Listings
by Tracy McMillan
Gallery Books
Publication March 8, 2016
$26.00 hard cover
ISBN: 9781476785523

Can Reading Shakespeare Change Lives?

"Shakespeare Saved My Life."

The title of Dr. Laura Bate's book is a quote by a prisoner in super maximum security. Dr. Bates volunteered to teach Shakespeare to prisoners.

The students were taken to private cells with small openings. They knelt on the cement floor and spoke through the opening to join the discussion. One student, Larry Newton, was convicted for life without parole for his participation in a murder, Newton had survived years in isolation.

Although Newton's education was sketchy and incomplete, he excelled at connecting the plays to his experiences. The plays made him confront his own actions and gave him a feeling of power over his thoughts and actions. He found self esteem and a reason to live.

"Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking."

"Everyone puts themselves into so many prisons."

--Larry Newton

Newton became a teacher himself, writing curriculum and plays for at-risk teens and prisoners.

"The idea is not to give the the answers, but to make them question."--Larry Newton

The prisoners were eager to participate in the program. They told Bates that by delving into the plays they were confronted their own decisions and thoughts. One prisoner admitted that the plays had saved lives--two.

A prisoner in the Shakespeare program was also a quilter and made Bates a quilt: 228 squares of black, white, and denim cloth. The black and white photograph in the book shows medallion style quilt with four printed bandannas in the center. It was surrounded by borders of squares in a checked pattern, and set with four more bandannas in the outside corners of the quilt. It is 6 feet by six feet according to Bates.

The prisoners who participated in both the Shakespeare program and the quilting group recited Shakespearean text while sewing, entertaining the other quilters and memorizing lines. The quilts were donated to charitable causes, including battered women's shelters and the families of deceased veterans. The quilts had been in the Indiana state fair and in the news.

The book is the choice of OverDrive's first Big Library Read, a global ebook club. The e-book can be downloaded for free between March 17 through March 31. Read about it at http://biglibraryread.com/

See Dr Bates on this news story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3JNobjeLjU

National Geographic's Innovators includes Dr. Bates in this story with photos
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/innovators/2014/04/140428-innovator-laura-bates-prisons-solitary-confinement-shakespeare/

"He said he'd been through all sorts of programs in prison, and nothing worked. But Shakespeare did. Why? Because all those other programs start with the premise that you're broken and need to be fixed—need to become another person. Shakespeare starts with the premise that you're not broken if you can handle the language and grapple with the issues. Once you do, you can start to get past whatever personas you've been hiding behind and examine who you really are."

The Reading Group Guide on the OverDrive website poses questions about the prison system, rehabilitation, and the impact of teachers. Then things get personal.

• What 'prisons' of habitual patterns are we caught in? 
• How would we react to the situations described in the book? 
• What Shakespeare plays you have read and can you discover personal relevance in the four-hundred-year-old text? 
• What are your personal prisons--and how can you overcome them?

To read an excerpt of the book check out
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/shakespeare-saved-my-life-excerpt-_n_3133831.html?

The book is compelling to read and often it is moving and hard to read. Dr. Bates does not put forward judgment on the prison system or about the rehabilitation of Larry Newton. Reading about Newton's background and experience growing up I did feel upset that he had been failed by society, and felt that his treatment in juvenile corrections was harsh and unhelpful.

Dr. Bate's work engages the prisoners who truly struggle with the text and how it applies to their own lives. It appears that because of their experiences the prisoners gain deeper insight into the plays than most college students coming from a more protected and supportive background.

I enjoyed my classwork in Shakespeare and have enjoyed seeing his plays in adulthood. My high school teacher made King Lear understandable to me, and I also covered that play in two different college courses. I learned that one should not give away power thinking that those who gain it will keep your best interests at heart. In other courses we read Hamlet, Henry V Part I and II, A Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as having read Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Cesar in high school classes. How has Shakespeare been relevant to my life? I haven't been as impacted as Larry Newton has been. I feel poorer in comparison.

I cannot imagine entering a prison as a volunteer. As a quilter, reading about a quilting group in prison sends chills up my spine. We work with scissors and needles and pins! Small objects that could be used as weapons, easily hid away. Dr. Bates grew up in a tough neighborhood, a child of immigrants, and was was not afraid of the men. She was careful and thoughtful, dressing drably and keeping relationships on a professional level.

As a book for discussion Shakespeare Saved My Life would excel. The comments left on the OverDrive website are varied and diverse.

I would not have discovered this book without the OverDrive promotion. I am glad I read it and I look forward to the next Big Library Read.