Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Book Review)

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

This is not actually a book review as it is difficult to review a book of this stature where every word and each sentence counts. Just Mercy is a testimony to the power of life dedicated to serve the poor and dispossessed and must be, therefore, read from cover to cover.

Stevenson documents his legal struggles to fight for the people on death row in the USA, most of them poor and majority African Americans. In this documentation of the most emotionally charged accounts of African Americans and their plights, we see a bright ray of hope for humanity. It is a human book at the core of it. An account of the fight against the oppression of race, the inhuman criminal practices, the unaccountable justice system, glaring poverty, and biases that have become part of being of those who hold power.

The book can be easily read with the plights of Dalits and other prosecuted minorities in India. As we hear a growing number of cases of mob lynching in India today, we can resonate with the book. As we hear the growing number of cases of caste-based atrocities in India, the book resonates with us. And as we hear the stories of millions of Dalits and other minorities in India languishing in the Indian prisons often without trials or any legal help, we can immediately feel drawn into the world of race discrimination in the USA and can identify with it and the pain it produces.

The book is filled with pithy sentences full of wisdom and stories that provoke us to think in human terms and come in grips with how irrational discrimination and hatred can cause inconceivable damage to humanity itself.

Stevenson says that the opposite of poverty is justice, not wealth, summarizing at once the pithy fight for rights in India when Babasaheb Ambedkar taught us that this battle is not for wealth or power, but it is the battle for justice. With justice comes to power and wealth. This is the reason why it is important to have the movement for social justice taking precedence over all the movements. With the justice movement, all the possibilities exist.

In one of the stories shared by Stevenson on how an elderly African American told young Stevenson the importance of fighting even when one is facing an impenetrable wall of racial division. It is convincingly clear that fight for justice is all there is to reclaim human personality from the deadening shackles of race, caste, and other forms of oppressive discrimination. The old man tells Stevenson: You have got to beat the drum of justice. After a while, he changes the statement to Beat the drum for justice.

Yes, it is a wake-up call for all committed to justice that we got to beat the drum of justice hard and we must continue to beat the drum for justice.

Get your copy of the book – Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist