Though this has the qualities I associate with fiction, it felt a lot like being forced to listen to a room full of college kids who just read Nietzsche for the first time and come home to perform that knowledge for hours *at* me - without asking 1) if I already know this, 2) if I care to listen to all of their newfound knowledge, and 3) if I agree with their strong opinions.

 

That's how I felt for much of the second two sections of this book (and I won't even go near the author's note that follows -- beyond saying that it's the best example of mansplaining a woman could hope to portray.) I have no problem with a white writer writing a person of color. I do have a problem with a fiction that is only thinly disguised "racial sensitivity 101" built on a cadre of stereotypical "types." I felt like Jodi Picoult took a class (and I was right - she did!), saw the light, feels woke, got serious, and set out to explain it all to all of us, without asking us to join in the conversation - or what we could hope to bring to it - much like an author who assumes you don't know any of the big words she uses. It was the long passages of internal dialogue that killed this book dead for me. The "aha" moments that took up pages and pages and then more pages repeatedly were so awfully serious and so awfully lecture-like, they could have been lifted from racial sensitivity 101 -- which made them completely unbelievable because as we teach in those classes, changing one's racial mindset takes a long time and is an internal process that cannot be done through thoughts alone. Practice will help, awareness is key, but no change like this happens overnight. I've taught those classes, and they sound just like this book, with the caveat I just made about changing (even when you start out as a stereotype, like every single character in this book.) Nonfiction exists for a reason. I thought this was a story - not a lecture, but I was wrong. Jodi Picoult doesn't realize that she's become the white savior that Kennedy is supposed to portray.

 

The book felt extremely condescending to the reader. Picoult should now wait while I go take a class on writing, interview a few writers, then I will type my long, heartfelt, dissertation length "aha" moments in a story and she should be FORCED to read my new feelings about writing. Because that's just about how ridiculous the inner dialogue of her characters sounded to me.

Two books I can recommend to Picoult or anyone else who actually cares about race and all the feelings white people are now having that I've read this year that cover similar topics: So You Want to Talk about Race  and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. If you want to go deeper, there are so many better books, both fiction and nonfiction.

 

The story's basic foundation could have held up a lovely tale. Picoult got indulgent with her newfound awareness and had her characters thinking and behaving in unrealistic ways to cram more of that knowledge into their heads, then she polished it off with an ending torn from a Disney Princess's wishbook. It all became very trite and downright silly by the end.

 

This is quite a book. An important read for those of us who are trying to understand issues or racism, especially the advantages our white skin have bestowed upon us (unless, of course, we're not white). The book jumps back and forth. Between the points of view of Ruth Jefferson, a nurse who works in L&D (labor and delivery); Turk Bauer, a white supremacist whose child died shortly after birth; and Kennedy McQuarrie, a young white lawyer who works in the public defender's office, because her eye-surgeon spouse makes enough money for the both of them.

The issue revolves around the birth of one Davis Bauer, Turk's son. Turk insisted that no black nurse should be allowed to touch his new-born son. But, there's a medical emergency c-section, and the nurse attending Davis, was called away and left Ruth to watch over Davis. Davis begins having medical problems. Ruth tries to resuscitate him, but stops when she hears her supervisor walking down the hall, the supervisor who wrote the orders that Ruth was not to touch the baby.

So, seeing a medical emergency, all hands are on deck, so to speak, and Ruth is given the job of chest compression, to keep the heart pumping while they try to restore the baby's breathing. The baby dies and Turk, who came into the room blames the black nurse for being too vigorous. He swears out a complaint against Ruth, and the hospital throws her under the bus, so to speak.

So, we have findings, the trial, and so forth. Ruth gets a nice middle-class, white public defender, who really doesn't understand racism. Basically, Ruth schools Kennedy. So, along with the trial, we learn quite a bit about the problems of white racism, our ignorance of the basic issues. We understand the overt racism, but not how our institutions have been designed to disadvantage people not born in a white skin.

It's all quite fascinating. I have been slowly learning about this stuff for a number of years now, but it's good to get different perspectives and looks. Then too, it's particularly important that we learn about these things given that we have recently installed a racist in the White House (not to mention a racist as Attorney General). Shame on us all.

Interesting, just a week after I finished this book, the guy who first tried to school me on the issues of white racism, Horace Seldon, passed away. Horace will be greatly missed, he was a true gem of a person.

 

 

Ruth Jefferson has been a neonatal nurse for over 20 years, at a small hospital in New Haven, CT.  She is a great nurse who loves her job.  During a routine newborn check, she is startled when the baby boy's father, Turk Bauer, insists on speaking with Ruth's supervisor, who subsequently informs her she is not to care for or even touch this young patient again.  The Bauers are white supremacists, and Turk has requested that no one who "looks like" Ruth touch the baby.  Ruth is African-American..

 

After having worked a double shift, Ruth is asked to watch over the baby, Davis Bauer, who has just undergone a routine circumcision and needs to be observed.  Because an emergency c-section has pulled all other available personnel away, Ruth is the only left to do so.  When he goes into cardiac distress, she faces the impossible choice of complying orders by doing nothing or defying them to administer to him.

 

When there is a adverse event, Ruth becomes a target and faces serious criminal charges.  The public defender assigned to her case is Kennedy McQuarrie.  The book has as its three first-person, present-tense narrators Ruth, Kennedy, and Turk.  The audiobook has three separate narrators for these roles, which I found really effective.  The book takes on race issues in a way that honors and explores the complexities associated with it, as the characters all recount their perspectives, and they all go through their own complicated journeys.  This is my second Jodi Picoult novel, after Leaving Time, and she's definitely become a favorite author.  She has a way of writing books I want to climb into so I can shut out the outer world until I'm done.

 

I had some uncanny timing with this book.  I'd placed a hold on the downloadable audiobook from my library's site ages ago. Just when I needed to make my "reader's choice" selection for my library's summer-reading program, this book finally became available.  

    I often struggle to figure out my role as an ally, to figure out if I’m supposed to be doing something or if I’m not doing something I should. I’ll be the first to admit that I am ignorant about a lot of things… unfortunately social justice isn’t something that’s taught in school. It’s left up to your parents or peers to instruct you in the way of being a decent human being, something that not all parents are inclined to be or teach.

Strange enough, I identified with Turk in this book. Now before you get your panties in a bunch, please let me explain. My family is perhaps not as vocal as these white supremacists in America, but I immediately found their behaviour familiar. My dad is the perfect Aryan, and I grew up listening to how black people were hardly better than baboons. It would have been so easy for me to buy into what I was taught from as young as I could remember… and indeed my sisters are happily racist today. But unfortunately for my family, I was a rebellious teenager (shocker). When I was forbidden to have black friends, I specifically sought out the only black girl in my class and befriended her. That may still sound horribly racist to many people, but it was a first step to my own awakening.

I am a product of my upbringing, and I still have a lot to learn, but I have spent most of my life questioning what my parents and others would have taught me, and I have worked hard to break away from their mentality of hate. This book called me out on a lot of my own bullshit, though. Like the fact that I don’t “see color” or am in the slightest bit racist. Sure, that’s what I tell myself and that I’d like to believe, but just like Kennedy, am I maybe trying too hard? Isn’t that it’s own brand of racism? And I guess, just like Kennedy, I’m making this review about me… Like I said, I still have a lot to learn.

In the author’s note at the back of this book, Jodi Picoult explained why she wrote the book and said that she expects push-back from it. I know this book wasn’t perfect, but I hope she didn’t get too much smack, because I needed this book and I really think she did a good job of providing a platform, and giving a voice to what black people still experience today. She definitely did a pretty good job of identifying white privilege and implicit racism.

“When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they’ve enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits.” – Jodi Picoult

Some of the things that happened to Ruth and the other black people in this book really breaks my heart, because even though I live in South Africa and it’s predominantly black, I know for a fact that SA is not that different from America. I have friends who are followed at the store to make sure that they don’t steal, whereas I am not. I have friends who are criticized for wearing their hair naturally curly. I have friends who are stared at in the street when their loved one’s skin tone doesn’t match their own. I have a father who scorned my sister-in-law’s new born baby because he was half black, and that “poor child”…

This was a difficult book to read, and I’m guessing a lot of people won’t like it. Most will be legitimate reasons like not liking the writing style or various other reasons people don’t like other books. But I think there will also be people who will not be able to accept this message as true, people who will resent the agenda. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so for those people, I hope a seed will have been planted. A seed is all that’s necessary to start a garden…

The end of this story was perhaps a little whimsical and too idealistic, but it resonated with me because at the end of the day, there is always hope. Hope that people can be better, that humanity can be better… It’s unlikely, but if you don’t have hope, then what is the point of even trying?

“People must learn to hate, and if the can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.” – Nelson Mandela