The first time I know about Jodi Picoult’s work is from her novel-adapted-into-movie, My Sister’s Keeper, literally a melodrama which makes you burst into tears. Some people already put Small Great Things in their recommendation list, but it doesn’t attract me until 2017 when I opened Periplus website and they had a great discount for this book hahaha. So, there I was buying this book for only IDR 66,000, such a great deal, wasn’t it?
Let me sum-up, this book basically tells us a drama related to racism. When people find me about the book I read, and I answer, “It is about racism”, they give me look like “What ?” I know, it seems so not relatable with our daily life in Indonesia. It seems like there is no racism in our country, or because simply, we don’t see it since we are the majority.
The story tells about a nurse, Rachel Jefferson, who has worked in Labor & Delivery Department in a hospital in USA for about 20 years. She is graduated from Yale, a very educated and talented nurse, she is very dedicated to her job. She thinks education is very important, thus it make her and her late husband move their house to a more developed society in US, and send their son to a reputable school. As a black woman, sometimes she is being mistreated, so that she always tries to be a remarkable one in her field. One day, in the hospital, they have a young couple, who just have their first son, Davis Bauer. Turk and Brittany Bauer are very happy, just like other couple, but then everything changes since Davis suddenly died. The couple blame Davis’ death to Ruth, as Ruth is happened to be the only person in the baby’s room when Davis died. Hospital management seems not to care about Ruth, instead, they put all responsibility to Ruth. Ruth and her family, helped by a public defendant, Kennedy McQuarrie, try to stand for themselves, in a way that many white people cannot understand.
As we know, Jodi Picoult tells the story in a very interesting plot. It starts from the main problem in the hospital. Then, one by one, every character is explored, their past, their background, their struggle, etc. She put a good effort in telling about White Supremacist, and she developed their characters from real events. I really like the way she set the character of Kennedy, as a white woman, Kennedy saves her thought about equality, something that many people around her cannot understand. As a young mother, she tries to teach her only daughter, Violet, about equality, against the normality from her society. We obviously become envy with Kennedy and Micah’s marriage, Micah is a doctor. Both of them have their promising career and they support each other. Kennedy and Micah is not that couple who ignore the debatable issue, instead they discuss it based on their point of view.
This book reminds me about myself, about what happen to my country lately. Like, why we already grow this ‘old’ but we cannot see the difference as diversity, as part of life, as a necessity. Somehow, I have higher hope for my generation to be more open to diversity, but reading this book I realize what makes my generation sometimes cannot be better than the previous one.
When Kennedy discuss with Howard, the junior defendant, about characteristics of the juror, she gives an opinion:
“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 and how it will affect their lives In other words, they’re minefields of egocentrism.”
Like a slap on my face, I sigh and think ‘Am I part of those millenials with egocentrism?” Maybe, we do it, maybe, we think like them unconsciously. Maybe, we are afraid that the diversity may distant us, challenge us, reduce our privilege of majority. So, we take it easy, we think that we are majority so everything has to work in a majority’s way. Are we? Hopefully, we are not.
Just like Ruth says:
Some of us never learn.
Some of us learn earlier than others.
It makes me realize, how scary people can be when they think only the certain group of people can lead. It is so scary that every family should teach peace to their kids, but instead, they develop hatred and fear, so their kids think about it as a common thing. It is so scary how violence become permissible when it comes to hatred.
One inspiration of this novel is coming from Marthin Luther King, Jr: If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
Finally, it is our choice to become what kind of person we want to be. It is our choice to spread peace or hatred. It is our choice to be kind to everyone, or just to our own group. It is our choice, to open our eyes and ears, or just simply listen to the same line over and over.
If a book can gives us a new point of view, this book surely do a great job
