You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
culpeppper 's review for:
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
Perhaps my expectations for what I was going to read were too high, but this was less of an investigation/research with a focus on victims and families and more Erin looking back on her time during this project and saying "that was rough, good thing I didn't give up!" It's narrative flow is choppy and we jump from topic to topic, then back around where we started which means we retread a lot of the same ground again and again. Sometimes, she really beats you over the head with a particular image or idea that she really wants you to get (distended stomachs from beatings are mentioned a lot) by mentioning it over and over again until the impact has been used up. She assumes the average reader is kinda dumb and explains some things multiple times (GIS, for one) yet never explains other parts, such as certain bone/anatomy terms. She tells you exactly what is going on at all times, but will lead you in the longest way to get to the point. This makes the pacing wonky— we'll spend three chapters talking about one week of her frustrating issues then skip over weeks or months where she describes stuff related to the process I'd much rather read about then a conversation she has with her best cop buddy. Granted, parts of the narrative are deeply emotional and engaging, but the biggest issue there is waaay too much material for the subject matter and she decides to fill it with long rambling personal speculation or reflection. There's a whole chapter, chapter 3, which is just Erin talking about her life. I skipped to the next chapter when she started talking about her husband.
All that would be fine had this not this not been presented as a story about the school and search for justice, and instead we get to hear about every single notable thing Erin has ever done from birth until present day. It's a symptom of the academic, overinflated ego of someone who has done something hard and expects to be showered with praise, yet presents this faux humble facade as if she didn’t decide to mention all these thank-you's she's recieved along the way. She almost sounds white savior-y at times, but that could be pushing it. Basically she makes about her in a way that consistently yanked me away from the actual narrative and research being done.
There's also very little, what I would consider, considerations on what this school says about the entire criminal justice program. She seems totally oblivious to any forms of child abuse that still run rampant in the system today, and even less for how much of a racist institution police and prisons are. She even references prisoners from a local jail "helping" their team with physical labor at one point, after talking about the history of labor in prisons. With zero indication of any awareness of irony. It's so painfully obvious that she wants to be right, be good that she fails to see she is using and perpetuating the same system that endangered these children in the first place, and how it continues to do so. She commends the cops who worked with her, even though they themselves could have their own abuses that have been swept under the rug.
All in all, I don't think this was very good. It's a messy mix of personal, political, traumatic, historical, scientific, and anecdotal story that fails to settle into a finished form, written by an oblivious white woman.
All that would be fine had this not this not been presented as a story about the school and search for justice, and instead we get to hear about every single notable thing Erin has ever done from birth until present day. It's a symptom of the academic, overinflated ego of someone who has done something hard and expects to be showered with praise, yet presents this faux humble facade as if she didn’t decide to mention all these thank-you's she's recieved along the way. She almost sounds white savior-y at times, but that could be pushing it. Basically she makes about her in a way that consistently yanked me away from the actual narrative and research being done.
There's also very little, what I would consider, considerations on what this school says about the entire criminal justice program. She seems totally oblivious to any forms of child abuse that still run rampant in the system today, and even less for how much of a racist institution police and prisons are. She even references prisoners from a local jail "helping" their team with physical labor at one point, after talking about the history of labor in prisons. With zero indication of any awareness of irony. It's so painfully obvious that she wants to be right, be good that she fails to see she is using and perpetuating the same system that endangered these children in the first place, and how it continues to do so. She commends the cops who worked with her, even though they themselves could have their own abuses that have been swept under the rug.
All in all, I don't think this was very good. It's a messy mix of personal, political, traumatic, historical, scientific, and anecdotal story that fails to settle into a finished form, written by an oblivious white woman.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Excrement, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Moderate: Ableism, Gore, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation
Minor: Bullying, Self harm, Vomit, War
There are many descriptions of child physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, mainly directed at boys between the ages of 5-21. Some of this violence is racially motivated.
There is a description of a lynching.