Take a photo of a barcode or cover
sarah_tellesbo 's review for:
Sycamore Row
by John Grisham
I'm not sure what to think of this book. I'm having some mixed feelings that I'm not entirely certain I can express in a coherent way. Like nearly everything else in 2020, this book has left me a bit confused, more than a bit uncomfortable, and lacking the words to describe how I feel.
I loved A Time to Kill when I read it a couple of years ago (though I think I may feel differently about it were I to re-read it), and I assumed I'd feel the same way about this book given that it's written by the same author and features essentially the same set of characters. But having spent more time than ever before learning about the endless and endlessly layered racial injustices in this country, the story struck a bit of a different chord.
Where before I may have seen our protagonist, Jake Brigance, as a well-meaning, colorblind lawyer ready to make big sacrifices for the sake of what's right, I now see blatant and unsettling white saviorism. Where I once might have viewed the characters of Booker Sistrunk and Simeon Lang as an obnoxious antagonists, I now see the perpetuation of black stereotypes and racial tropes by a white author who seems oblivious to the problematic nature of these descriptions. And, in the end, (SPOILER!) where I may have previously perceived an act of benevolent kindness in the splitting of the $24 million fortune between the Black character who won it and the white characters who were inarguably horrible human beings, I now see this as yet another instance of white people's failure to pay long overdue reparations to Black people who have been terrorized and exploited and murdered in cold blood for hundreds of years.
This story just doesn't have any real sparkle in light of what I know now about white privilege, racism in the United States, and our ongoing failure as white people to fully acknowledge, understand, and repair the injustices through which this country was born and raised. I've always considered myself a feminist, but I'm learning more and more that I have a long way to go in that regard. We all have a very long way to go.
I loved A Time to Kill when I read it a couple of years ago (though I think I may feel differently about it were I to re-read it), and I assumed I'd feel the same way about this book given that it's written by the same author and features essentially the same set of characters. But having spent more time than ever before learning about the endless and endlessly layered racial injustices in this country, the story struck a bit of a different chord.
Where before I may have seen our protagonist, Jake Brigance, as a well-meaning, colorblind lawyer ready to make big sacrifices for the sake of what's right, I now see blatant and unsettling white saviorism. Where I once might have viewed the characters of Booker Sistrunk and Simeon Lang as an obnoxious antagonists, I now see the perpetuation of black stereotypes and racial tropes by a white author who seems oblivious to the problematic nature of these descriptions. And, in the end, (SPOILER!) where I may have previously perceived an act of benevolent kindness in the splitting of the $24 million fortune between the Black character who won it and the white characters who were inarguably horrible human beings, I now see this as yet another instance of white people's failure to pay long overdue reparations to Black people who have been terrorized and exploited and murdered in cold blood for hundreds of years.
This story just doesn't have any real sparkle in light of what I know now about white privilege, racism in the United States, and our ongoing failure as white people to fully acknowledge, understand, and repair the injustices through which this country was born and raised. I've always considered myself a feminist, but I'm learning more and more that I have a long way to go in that regard. We all have a very long way to go.