I loved reading Jodi Picoult before as totally engrossing, new to me topics that are easy to read and connect with the characters. I haven’t read one in so long and was so excited that I just automatically requested it without looking at it.
I really should have.
Small Great Things starts with Ruth, giving her day-to-day as a labor and delivery nurse raising her son and why she picked this career.
Then there’s the “don’t touch my kid” scene with the Nazi couple.
After this, it starts including Turk’s perspective. I do not have the stomach for this sob backstory, how seductive the Nazi movement is, how society has failed these people.
I didn’t think it’d turn into this at all. I couldn’t continue reading it after Nazi Dad waxes poetic about the first kid he recruited and twisted into “his image.” How easy it was. How he planted materials and took advantage of them, like he was preyed upon.
I gave up and wrote this brief rundown of what I got through. Upon going back to Goodreads, I realized I didn’t even get to meet the other main player, the white woman lawyer.
Then I started reading other reviews from people. There’s very clear trends. The first page of community reviews is almost all white women praising the book for being bold, tackling a tough issue, and teaching them about what racism is like for black women.
Except this review by Tracey, a black woman, almost towards the bottom. It’s a generous two stars and is an absolute must read. It spurred me to keep digging.
1 and 2 star reviews fall into two categories:
-People who hate the “leftist” agenda and mad about the white people portrayal. (For the record: Fuck them.)
-People, especially black women, critiquing how problematic Small Great Things is and is another feel-good racism book for white women book clubs.
If you don’t care about spoilers, this review gives a great summary.
Here are some reviews from voices that need to read and listened to.
Tianna, a black nursing student, reviewed it with 1 star.
Janani Vaidya also gave it a 1 star:
Maybe you could learn to decenter yourself from these conversations for once. Instead, boost authors and writers from within the community to talk about those experiences, their history, their present- those voices will ring truer.
Max G’s 1 star review:
I actually find this book a bit offensive. I get what Jodi Picoult is trying to do here but this story is rife with offensive stereotypes - angry Black sister, long-serving servant mama, flamboyant pastor, sassy transgender prostitute. All the same tired tropes I could find literally anywhere else.
But even worse is the thread of respectability in Ruth's story. She's the classic palatable Black person; light skinned, educated, inoffensive, widow of a veteran, doesn't colour all white people with the same brush. Of course we should feel sorry for her! Of course she's being wrongly persecuted!
The problem is that what happened would be just as wrong if Ruth were a crackhead with a criminal record. That should be the point - that racism is real and it's wrong, period. No matter whom it's happening to.
But in trying to tell a story that would be relatable to her "mainstream" audience, she does the cause a huge disservice. Huge.
I read that she wrote this because it's a story that needed to be told. I agree, but I'm not sure she's the one who should be telling it. If she really wanted to support an oppressed community she should have put her considerable influence behind a writer of colour - God knows there are enough of them - who could have told this story with the complexity and nuance that she missed.
Erhodesi’s 1 star review nails it succinctly:
I can't think of a book that has made me as angry and sad as this book. While Picoult feels that she is doing her bit to fight racism, she is doing a disservice to her readers. The middle class white woman demographic this book is written for, will pat themselves on the backs that they now get it. But Picoult's privilege is showing in every turn of this book. It's in the framing and selection of the main character. It's in the sympathetic skinhead. And most painfully, it is showing on the neat bow she wraps around her ending. The chracters are stereotypes. The twist is predictable. Because of this, the social and moral issue of racism is addressed in a way that feels exploitave of people impacted by racism everyday.
And it goes on and on and on. If you can stomach it, the reviews are good reading. A far better use of time than reading Small Great Things.