To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee
RATINGS
Overall: 4 / 5 stars
Text Level: High
Entertainment: High
Self-Help: Medium
Genres: Fiction, Classics,
Page Count: 281
Is this book right for my inmate and me?
People that are ready to give because they feel everyone has prejudged them and had no hope for support, read this book
Buy from: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
Review By: Blackbird (Inmate)
A story of courage to understand others before we make our judgments.
Judgment plays a major role in the lives of our society and it is no different for the inmates inside jail. We are all quick to judge someone as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because of looks, economics or background before we ever stop to consider the facts. Inmates can live in fear of judgment by other inmates,s judges, juries, lawyers, and families. The belief that we will be seen as guilty no matter what we say or do is constantly on our minds. This fear does not end when we leave prison. It often shifts to anxiety and stress about how we will be accepted by the community on our re-entry. There are inmates that lose the ability to believe others will ever be able to see them as anything but a ‘criminal'.'“ This creates despair and doubts that they should even try to build a better life.
In To Kil a Mockingbird, we see the painful troubles of others judging individuals too quickly. In this story, we meet a young girl named “Scout” Finch as she grows up in Alabama during the time of segregation. Her father, Atticus, is the only defense attorney in the small town. Scout looks up to her father and learns one of life’s great lessons to not judge someone before you truly know them. Atticus is appointed to defend a young back man from rape charges he didn’t commit. Being a young black man in the South at this time meant he has been judged guilty by the town population without any knowledge of the facts. With pressure coming fromcitizens to not defend this man, Aticus stands up for what he knows is right and lets the facts guide him. Even after multiple death threats, Atticus never gives up hope on the case and the man until innocence is proven.
We get a chance to read that even when our fear is greatest, and everyone might have decided we are guilty before our case starts, we are never really alone. There are still people that will fight with us in the hope fo a better future because they see our worth. by reading this book, we are able to remain hopeful that other people will still believe in us and in our potential to change It also allows us to question the times we might be judging others before we know them. To Kill a Mockingbird shows inmates that unsound early judgment doesn’t have to be a choice we make.