Written by lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy is a memoir recounting various cases that Stevenson took involving the wrongly condemned and the poor. Throughout the novel, he particularly places a very strong emphasis on how racial inequality and bias plays a large part in the sentencing and incarceration of many of the African-Americans who he had helped fight for, and how both he and his readers could help stand up and fight against such bias. Through these cases, Stevenson also delivers a strong message of mercy and justice to his audience, as many of his clients were either wrongly condemned or accused.
I enjoyed reading this book especially because of how it relates to the current state of the world today, with Black Lives Matter steadily gaining support and people seeking justice for the wrongly accused and wrongly killed members of our society. I thought that the messages and themes of this book strongly resonated with what many people in the world are fighting and standing up for at this time.
Review Written by Elizabeth, 12th Grade