Redheaded Reviews: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

This book gets its title from the Martin Luther King Jr. quotation "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way." Ruth Jefferson was raised by a mother who worked her ass off as a maid to a very rich family and she raised her daughter to do "small things in a great way". She pushed her daughter to succeed academically and she got scholarships to go to private schools. Her sister Rachael, not so book smart, went to school in Harlem. Rachel had friends, while Ruth really didn't. Ruth was light skinned and Racheal was dark skinned. Rachael always accused Ruth of trying to fit into the white world and forgetting where she came from. Ruth would go on to get a degree in nursing from Yale and get a job at Mercy-General Hospital in Vermont. Ruth is a war widow with a teenage son, Edison who is preparing for college. She's saving money from her job as a labor and delivery nurse to help pay for it.

Then one day she goes into the room of a woman, Brit Bauer who had recently delivered a baby boy, to come in and give it an exam and try to get it to start breastfeeding. She senses some tension in the room and the parents are discussing something angrily when she takes the child over to the table to examine him. When she goes to try to get the child to breastfeed, the father, Turk, explodes and demands to see her supervisor. When her supervisor arrives he tells her he does not want a black person touching his child or wife. Marie, her supervisor, buckles under the pressure of this man and puts a note in the file that no African Americans are to touch the child. And Ruth happens to be the only African American working on the floor.

Ruth is highly upset about this, of course. She's their top nurse and has been there for twenty years and to be told she cannot do her job based on her skin color? Then when Ruth is taking a break during a double shift, the Bauer baby is wheeled into where she is. He has just had his circumcision. Corrine the nurse watching him when suddenly she has to go to do an emergency c-section with Marie in tow leaving Ruth the only person to watch over the Bauer baby. Suddenly he goes into respiratory failure and Ruth is confronted with a dilemma of whether or not to risk her job and her license by touching the child and going against orders. She does but stops when Marie comes in and says she was doing nothing so she wouldn't get in trouble. A code is called and Ruth does compressions. The Bauers hear the code and come into the room to see Ruth touching their child and then see their child die.

The Bauers would seek to have Ruth charged with first-degree murder and negligent homicide due to her hatred of them and the belief that she did nothing when the baby went into distress. It is believed that she deliberately compressed down too hard injuring the baby. Ruth will get a public defender, Kennedy McQuarrie, a white woman whom she must try to learn to trust and somehow get her to understand her world and what it means to be black. Kennedy does not want to play the "race card" in the courtroom because you cannot win that way, but Ruth demands it because she wants to have her say. Can these two women find a common ground?

This book is told through the eyes of Ruth, Kennedy, and Turk. It's hard reading the Turk parts because some of it is so vile in its racist rants and actions. But you also see the Turk who loves his wife and his dead son whom he is mourning just like any parent. Kennedy at the beginning suffers from the "white knight" syndrome and thinks she's the least racist person she knows, but she will learn to see race differently as the book progresses. Ruth learns to accept help from others and perhaps trust others.

This book will have you examine your own views on racism. It doesn't just come in the obvious packages like Turk Bauer's skinhead. It comes from the storeowner following you or demanding to see a receipt just because you are a person of color. It's noticing that there is one person of color in your office but not ever asking why. This is a powerful book that examines all sides fully and shines a light on something Americans like to avoid talking about: race.

Quotes

I fold my arms and stare down at the newborn. Babies are such blank states. They don’t come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don’t like. They don’t come into this world with anything really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 102)

I pound this stranger into someone who will never be recognized, since it’s the only way to remember who I am.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 166)

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Maybe however much you’ve loved someone, that’s how much you can hate. It’s like a pocket turned inside out.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 685)