Absolutely feel free to correct or educate me (though you are under no obligation to donate your mental and emotional strength) if I am missing something, but this book is really bothering me.
I usually don’t read Jodi Picoult, because I feel she’s very formulaic and I find her writing lazy. In the books I’ve read by her, she weaves this intricate plot with a ton at stake (like in *My Sister’s Keeper,* >!Anna is fighting her family and risking her sister’s life, and we find out her sister wanted that, which makes for incredibly interesting dynamics outside of the courtroom!<), and then she throws some random plot twist in there that isn’t realistic and you couldn’t have possibly seen coming in hopes that you shed a few cheap tears and feel wowed (so in *My Sister’s Keeper,* >!instead of Anna having to face even a moment of life in this new weird position, she randomly gets sideswiped, goes brain dead, her organs get donated *anyway*, and Kate just happens to live happily and healthily ever after now that Anna’s dead, even though she has never been healthy a day in her life previously!<).
But I have heard so many things about *Small Great Things,* I thought it might be the exception. It wasn’t. But that’s not what’s bothering me the most.
What’s bothering me the most is that Jodi Picoult felt that this story – Ruth’s story and the story of racism in America – was important enough that it had to be written down and told. And she’s right – it does. We all need to face it and dismantle systems of oppression. But apparently it didn’t need to be told *enough* that she bothered to collaborate with a POC author. It didn’t need to be told enough that she would lend some of her fame and fortune to a POC author so that that author could write their experiences rather than a white woman writing experiences that she may have heard about, but has never experienced.
And that bleeds through the novel too. The whole case, Kennedy is telling Ruth that if she takes the stand and acknowledges that this is about race, they will almost certainly lose. Ruth wants to anyway – which again, is good. But it puts them in a bad position. So Ruth takes the stand, acknowledges it’s about race, but then also makes it worse by having her outburst at Turk. So now they’re in an even worse position than Kennedy had anticipated, so you’d expect some fallout. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s realistic.
But no! The white savior Kennedy saves the day. You see, Ruth took on the emotional and mental labor of educating Kennedy, and then Kennedy delivers an impassioned closing argument *entirely* about race, and she gets through to *everyone!* Including the prosecutor! And the judge! And he throws Ruth’s case out, and Ruth is free to go! And while I could have lived with the ending where her case got thrown out quite easily – it was more realistic than other Picoult endings I’ve read – it really sits wrong with me that even though the whole novel is about letting Ruth speak (or rather, letting Jodi Picoult in her blackface of Ruth speak), Kennedy’s words are still the ones that are heard and valued more. A Black woman may have spoken, but the white woman is the one who repeated her words and made them *heard!*
I wouldn’t have an issue with this if I thought Picoult intended it, but I don’t think she did. And from what I see online, I don’t think almost any of the readers are seeing it that way either.
Let’s not even get into the White Supremacist’s happy ending, where he goes around the country speaking about the “hatred that was in his heart,” openly admitting to the multiple assaults and hate crimes he committed, and faces no consequences. And says that if his wife can give him, why can’t he forgive himself – and that’s his happy ending. He was unhappy as a White Supremacist, and now he can forgive himself – with no consequences.
And in that way, Picoult is also playing the white savior. She’s making money and fame off of a book that is about experiences she has never had and will never have, and reaping the praise that comes with tackling such a “difficult issue” without bothering to use her voice to amplify the voices of those who are *actually* having these experiences.
I am ashamed at myself for having read this book.
by NoxiousSelection