Small Great Things

Thought-provoking, emotional, wrapped up a bit too neatly. Reading the author's note in the back of the book gave me a greater appreciation for the passion, interest, and work that went into this book, and the bibliography is a great resource.

I had been looking for this book for months and finally found it for sale as an ebook. Once I started reading it I had reservations about a book on race written by a white woman, especially when there are so many classic books by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou et al that I have not read, particularly one laced with so many n-words. It made me wonder why I passed so many classic works by African American women to read this one written by a white woman. Was that part of my personal bias?

Anyway, it did a good job of showing growing awareness in a white “non-racist.” It showed two ways of dealing with racism from the point of view of the protagonist and her sister. It reminds me of Cornel West in Race Matters. He spoke of race-effacing, race-identifying, and race-transcending people of color, and I think those dynamics are explored here. It explored the contradictions of hate, similar to the laundry scene in American History X and when the antagonist sees others around him soften when children and other priorities are introduced. It takes a lot of energy to hate, and in some ways it provides hope that in this current environment we can hope that extreme elements who feel emboldened to be overtly racist will one day wake up to the reality that love is what powers the universe and that we all need to work to dismantle racism.

There weren't any pat answers, and I didn't expect there to be. There were moral lessons, hard conversations, and the realistic portrayal of the delicate, painful, and rewarding nature of inter-racial friendships and the shallow nature of most “friendships” like those we share with co-workers and people we grew up with.

Well done, Ms. Picoult. Kudos!