"In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.", Angela Davis

I recently listened to a podcast series called Seeing White, which explored how and why whiteness as a concept was a created, and how it continues to function in American society. (I know, I know, if you're someone who is also friends with me on social media you've heard me recommend this podcast multiple times. I don't care; you should listen to it.) One of the things I realized listening to the podcast was that even though I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about racial justice issues, I still have so much to learn about the history of race and the myriad ways white supremacy has been baked into the foundation of American society.

Bryan Stevenson's memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, provides more insight into many of the issues raised in the podcast. Bryan Stevenson is a civil rights lawyer who has spent his career representing people whose rights have been trampled on by a racist criminal justice system. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has argued cases before the US Supreme Court challenging the death penalty, and life imprisonment without parole for juvenile offenders. Just Mercy chronicles his early career; the cases he worked on and the legal issues they represented. Since his days as a young, overworked lawyer, Stevenson has become a sought-after expert on criminal justice reform. He has also, as head of the Equal Justice Initiative, given the country the first museum and memorial dedicated specifically to lynching victims.

Just Mercy does a beautiful job balancing legal theory with the very intense, very personal stories of the clients Stevenson and EJI represented over the years. Stevenson lays out a clear path from the racist policies of the Jim Crow era to the continued racist practices in the age of mass incarceration. He clearly demonstrates the inherent inequities in the jury selection process and the harsh realities of prison on juveniles who are tried as adults. Stevenson intersperses the stories of his clients with his own story, demonstrating a depth of compassion that adds emotional heft to an already powerful story. I don't know how anyone who reads this book could argue with the basic lack of justice in our so-called justice system. Just Mercy is a clarion call for reform, real reform, to a system that was designed to function as a form of social control over people of color and poor people, those who are the most vulnerable in our society.

My Year of King, #13-Christine

Love at first sight. There's no other way to describe the feeling teenager Arnie Cunningham gets the first time he sees the 1958 red-and-white Plymouth Fury rusting away in the tall grass with a "For Sale" sign in the window. Thus begins the long and terrifying odyssey of a boy and his evil, demonic car known as Christine. The narrator of King's 13th novel Dennis Guilder has a bad feeling about the car from the start, but Arnie quickly becomes unnaturally attached to her. Named Christine by her previous owner, the car begins to exhibit unusual behavior right from the start. Her odometer runs backwards. Her dented bumpers and ripped upholstery begin to repair themselves. Her radio only plays songs from the 1950s. As Christine begins to rise from the rust heap to some semblance of her former glory, Arnie himself begins to change. His teenage acne clears up. He becomes more confident, standing up to his parents for the first time in his life. He starts working for the shady owner of the garage where he "works" on Christine, though he often can't remember making the repairs to her engine or exterior once they appear. He even gets the courage to ask out the new girl, Leigh Cabot, even though you could only describe his previous experience with girls as non-existent. With a new girlfriend, a new car, and new-found strength and maturity, Dennis should have been happy for his friend, but as the year goes on and Arnie becomes more and more obsessed with Christine, Dennis can only be afraid-for Arnie, and for anyone who comes between Christine and her new owner. When the deaths start, Dennis and Leigh try to convince themselves that they are imagining the malevolence they feel whenever they ride in Christine, but eventually they can no longer ignore the evil influence she has on Arnie, who has begun to change in ways that scare them both. But how to destroy the evil that resides in Christine's shiny chrome mirrors and gleaming red-and-white frame?

So far, I've enjoyed most of King's books just as much 30 years later as I did when I first read them, and this one is no exception. It follows some of King's now-familiar themes and motifs; children or teenagers as protagonists, an every day object possessed by something evil, and a weird psychological connection between said object and some poor slob who was just going about his life. This is one of the things that make King's works more than just monster stories. You can't help but have sympathy for Arnie, even as he becomes increasingly hostile and irrational. My only real criticism is that Dennis's character seems a little too good to be true. He's a little too mature, a little too self-assured, and a little too willing to stay friends with someone who was essentially popularity poison. But King does in Christine what King does best; exploring how regular people respond in extraordinary circumstances.

I don't remember loving the movie made from this novel, but then I really haven't liked most of the movies made from King's books, the most recent version of It being the one notable exception. I think that the special effects available at the time just weren't up to the creep-factor that the self-driving, murderous Christine required to be truly terrifying.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens' Agenda, Becky Albertalli

Simon is 16, gay, and in the closet. Afraid of how his friends, classmates, and parents will react when
they find out he likes boys, he lives a double life, pretending to be straight by day, and emailing back and forth with the anonymous and very gay Blue by night. When he accidentally leaves his email open on a school computer, another student, Martin, sees his conversation with Blue. Martin uses this knowledge to blackmail Simon into arranging a date between Martin and Simon's friend Abby Martin's threats and Simon's own increasing difficulty keeping his truth from his friends leads to tension in his usually close knit friend group, and when his relationship with Blue goes from virtual to irl, Simon finds himself struggling to adapt to the changes in his life.

This book is the inspiration for the movie Love Simon that came out last spring, and while I haven't seen the movie yet, if it is half as charming as the book then I know I will love it. Simon is such a likable, relate-able character. He perfectly represents the situation so many of the queer youth I know find themselves in. Society itself has moved so far in terms of LGBTQ+ acceptance it seems like everyone should be able to be out without fear, but the reality is much more complicated. There are still plenty of people out there who think being gay is a sin, and even people who claim to be accepting sometimes have trouble coming to terms with the issue when the person coming out is their own son, daughter, brother, or sister. Simon THINKS he knows that the people closest to him will be accepting, but taking that first step into the light makes a person incredibly vulnerable, and once that news it out there's no taking it back.

But Simon isn't a sympathetic character just because he is making this huge, scary change. It's because he reads like any normal (and by normal I mean weird) teenager. He can be selfish and self-absorbed, he can use people, he makes decisions out of fear of rejection and ridicule, and he makes poor choices about school and drinking and how to talk to his friends. But all of those things just make him more endearing, because he reads like a REAL PERSON. I mean, I can think of at least a half dozen teenagers I've known over the years who are basically Simon by another name. And not just gay teenagers, either. Some of the struggles Simon has are universal, though they make look different depending on your identity. How do I know my friends will stand by me? Who am I in relation to who my parents think I am? How can I tell if a person likes likes me? Anyone who's has been, or is currently, a teenager has gone through some form of Simon's journey.

Finally, and this is my favorite, the book is NOT TRAGIC! My wife and I joke that the gays always have to have some tragic end in every movie or TV show, whether that end is a job, a relationship, or their life. This book shows that life for LGBTQ+ folks doesn't have to be full of suffering and sorrow. Figuring out who you are and how to navigate romantic relationships are just part of growing up, and it's refreshing to read a story that treats that process as the normal part of life that it is, rather than focusing on how hard and sad and dangerous it is when the person is gay. Not that there aren't people who experience danger and sadness and anger in their coming out process, but focusing on that fact ALL THE TIME is just one more form of othering.

By the Time You Read This, Lola Jaye

This book came to me by way of my Little Free Library. I can't really explain why I decided to bring it in. On the surface, it's not really my thing. Regular readers of my book reviews will know that I am anti anything that reminds me of a Lifetime or Hallmark movie. I don't mind sentimental stories, but when the emotional manipulation is so thick you can cut it with a knife, I just can't. But free books are free books, so it ended up on my to-read shelf.

Lois's father dies of cancer when she is five. On her 12th birthday, her aunt brings her a set of manuals that her father wrote for her in anticipation of his death. She is to open and read one on each birthday until she turns 30, the age her father was when he died. Lois, who has spent essentially her whole life grieving the father she barely remembers, anxiously awaits each birthday, ready to read the words of wisdom that he left for her. Along the way she learns a lot about herself and her relationships-with family, friends, and lovers-and comes to terms with the hole in her life that losing her father caused.

Super Lifetime-movie-like, right? I thought so too, and when I started reading I gave it 50 pages before I would abandon it for something less schmaltzy. And then, around page 75, I realized I was totally hooked. It's certainly not perfect-there are definitely sections where I was annoyed either by Lois herself, who essentially spent the majority of her life ignoring the people she had left in favor of the father she lost, or by some overly-sentimental little moment. But Jaye took what could have been a saccharine story and made it palatable, in large part because the manuals themselves, the only mechanism through which Lois or the reader can know her father, are full of self-deprecating humor, self-doubt, and real talk life lessons. No inspirational platitudes here; Lois's father admits his shortcomings and mistakes, and rather than being the untouchable saint Lois tries to make him, the reader sees a real person, struggling with his own mortality and his grief at leaving his young daughter to grow up without him.

While I certainly wouldn't describe this novel as literary, it is a decent example of what women's fiction, specifically chick lit, can be when done well. Of course, most of my criticisms of chick lit still stand-Lois's life is defined by her relationships with men (her father and others), there's a healthy dose of female competitiveness, and her professional success is shown as being hollow without the "love of a good man". But I got sucked in anyway.