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Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene? Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong. With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.
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This book was amazing, even though I was so busy in school I tore through it in less than two weeks.
Really made me realize just how privileged I am, and even though I don't realize just how racist I am.
'Racism is different. It's fraught, and it's hard to discuss, and so often as a result we don't.'
Although I'll never understand how it feels to be black, this book definitely helped me be more aware.
0I actually quite enjoyed reading this book. I've read tons of Picoult before and my experience has been that she makes me feel sympathy/compassion for all of her characters. I frequently can understand and "be on" both sides presented in her books. So I was a bit unsettled to start this book knowing that one of the main characters is a white supremacist--I didn't want to be identifying with that guy! And it was easy to not identify with him as a white supremacist, though I still felt very sorry for him because he is mourning the loss of his child and then struggling in his marriage as well. It was easy to sympathize these human moments.
I felt like the take-home message was perhaps more for white people and the most growth and change happened with the white lawyer Kennedy.
This was a book club book, and the discussion was pretty lively. I wish my book club wasn't so white, it'd have been nice to have a variety of opinions and a perspective from a person of color, considering that was what the major discussions were about.
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