Small Great Things by Picoult

Ref: Jodi Picoult (2016). Small Great Things. Ballantine Books.

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Summary­

  • Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong (goodreads).

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Misc Quotes

  • If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.-Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.-Benjamin Franklin.

  • Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence.

  • I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.

  • The Millennials are the me generation. They usually think everything revolves around them, and make decisions based on what's going on in their lives & how it will affect their lives. They're minefields of egocentrism.”

  • I knew that sometimes when people spoke, it wasn’t because they had something important to say. It was because they had a powerful need for someone to listen.

  • That’s the problem with having a calling...It doesn’t just pay the rent.

  • Even when a client has done something unlawful, I can find sympathy. I can acknowledge a bad choice was made, but still believe in justice, as long as everyone has equal access to the system—which is exactly why I do what I do.

  • Old skinheads don’t die. They used to join the KKK, but now they join the Tea Party. Don’t believe me? Go listen to an old Klan speaker and compare it to a speech by a Tea Party Patriot. Instead of saying Jew, they now say Federal government. Instead of saying Fags, they say Social ill of our country. Instead of saying Nigger, they say Welfare.

  • If I didn’t hang around their edges, I told myself, it was because I didn’t want Christina to feel like she had to include me. The real reason I distanced myself, though, was because it hurt less to step away than to risk that inevitable moment where I would become an afterthought.

  • Trying to look like you aren’t prejudiced, you can’t even understand that when you say race doesn’t matter all I hear is you dismissing what I’ve felt, what I’ve lived, what it’s like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

  • White Supremacists were more academic, publishing treatises; Skinheads were more violent, preferring to teach a lesson with their fists. White Separatists were the guys buying land in North Dakota and trying to divide the country so that anyone non white would be kicked over the perimeter they created. Neo-Nazis were a cross between Aryan Nations and the Aryan Brotherhood in prisons—if there was a violent street gang criminal element to the Movement, they were it. There were Odinists and Creationists and disciples of the World Church of the Creator. But in spite of the ideology that split us into factions, we’d all come together one day of the year to celebrate: April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler.

  • Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.

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