This is one of those books that I want to put into everyone’s hands and one that I’m planning to own (because I read a library copy.) Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and one of the many interesting talking heads in Ava DuVenay’s documentary, 13th, has crafted a book that is part memoir, part investigative journalism, and all heart—angry, tearful, heart. It tackles the mess that is our criminal justice system by focusing specifically on Stevenson’s work with prisoners on death […]
A mixed bag book club read for me
My Book Club has decided to merge August and September’s books together, which is a good thing overall, since August was *crazy* for us all. Plus, B and D, the members who had the respective picks, decided to go with similarly themed books. B chose Coates’s Between the World and Me (which I read last year and found really profound and insightful), and D chose Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. I had a strong reaction to it, which he was not expecting. The Chancellor’s review is […]
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
“My frantic search for a ‘post-graduation plan’ led me to law school mostly because other graduate programs required you to know something about your field of study to enroll.” (4) I knew almost immediately that I had an affinity with Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy (2014). He went to law school because he wasn’t sure what else to do, and he never felt like he fit in. I ended up in law school in the same way and wondered why everyone was so excited about […]

