The Nature of Things

Kudos to Jodi Picoult for having the courage to write about racism in America. And indeed it must have taken quite a bit of nerve for a middle-aged white woman in a position of privilege to take on the task of telling the story, speaking in the voice, of an African-American woman who is unjustly accused of a heinous crime and tried for that crime. Her effort is flawed but still admirable. Picoult takes the title of her book from a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way."   One could argue that this book is a small thing done in a greater cause; the cause of starting a conversation about racism and its self-defeating stupidity. The writer's main audience is most likely white, and her earnest aim is to reach that population and make them think about the challenges that people of color face every day in their lives, challenges which we as white people can never truly comprehend, because, frankly, whatever our ...