Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

 Just Mercy is a memoir that follows the journey of Bryan Stevenson who is an attorney who helps disadvantaged clients. Bryan interns at the Atlanta Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, which provides legal representation for poorer people on death row. Bryan decides to open up an office in Alabama after an encounter with an older black man who encourages him to keep fighting for justice. Bryan is eventually assigned to Walter McMillan's case who was accused of murdering two white women. Walter is put on death row after a man testifies to seeing Walter's truck at the scene of one of the woman's murders. Bryan also meets Herbert Richardson who is on death row after killing the niece of the woman he was trying to win back. Herbert ends up being executed and Bryan watches his execution. Bryan knew he wouldn't be able to save Herbert so his goal was to get Walter out of death row and prison. 

This book is extremely engaging and is a great book that talks about racial and social justice issues. The book takes place during a time when black people were discriminated against and it was even more normal than it is now. Alabama was also known to be a very racist state since it is a southern state and segregation was not completely over. Just Mercy gives an inside look at what it was like to be black in a racist state where the system was not in your favor. It also shows the struggles that black people dealt with even when they had positions that were considered higher like lawyers. Early on in the book Bryan gets stopped by the police and has a gun pointed at him. The fact that this book is a memoir shows that these are real experiences that people had to deal with just because of the color of their skin. 

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. It was engaging and had a clear plot. The book also had a lot of emotion put into it. For example, the part in the book where Herbert is getting executed is very sad and I felt like I was there. If I were to recommend this book to anyone, I would recommend it to everyone. The racial justice issues this book touches on are very important and everyone should be aware of our country's racist past that we still have not recovered from. I would give this book a rating of 9/10 due to the issues it talks about with our justice system and how corrupt it was back then. I also liked that the book was a memoir because it made everything that happened in the book more real. 

- Chizara