Review: Dear Martin

Dear Martin by Nic Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Are we really all equal? Or are some of us still more equal than others? Justyce is put in handcuffs for hours for trying to get his drunk ex-girlfriend home safely by a police officer who assumed he was attacking her. He has top SAT scores, he's at the top of his class at school, but none of that mattered to the policeman, only the color of his skin. Justyce writes to Martin Luther King, Jr. trying to figure out who he is and how to deal with the way he is treated by the world around him.

I started this book in audio and then finished it on my kindle. The audio is very good, just over four hours. When I got to the halfway point of this book, I had to put it down, and walk around my living room to relieve the stress of the story. I had to do it again at about the three fourths point also. Towards the end of chapter 17 Justyce is thinking about something he's been told by another character: "Resistance is existence.... These white people don't got no respect for us.... There's no escaping the Black Man's Curse...." I get it, but it crushes me, and made me think--what am I doing to change things?

Especially relevant today are these words from Martin Luther King Jr.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter.” “I Have a Dream” speech, 1963


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