Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas
by Joyce King
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joyce KingEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-05
ISBN: 0375421327
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas
Book Review: Grueling story, but worth the read
Summary: 5 Stars
The beginning of this book was awful - not awfully written - just awfully sad, awfully detailed, awfully ugly.
Midway through the story, the writer's knack for describing the small to convey the "bigness" of this particular mundanely categorized hate crime sickened me. She wrote "The [...] is shredded and [...] removed by the dragging." It sickened and shamed me. I was embarrassed for having not known - embarrassed for failing to pay attention to the particulars. Embarassed for having filed this person's story in a makeshift generic Emmit Till file.
After being forced to view (in a sense) the victim's remains, and being made aware of the remorseless attitudes of the perpetrators, I had little patience for the writer's need to explore and explain prison culture in such depth. I was not interested in theories that placed blame anywhere other than squarely upon the hearts and souls (or lack thereof) of the persons who dared to commit such a heinous act.
However, upon completing the book I was satisfied. The writer had meticulously attended to every facet of the story. I appreciated the way the writer interrupted the factual reporting with personal narrative. It kept the reader mindful that the story being told was true and real. Though reading this story was at times painful, gruesome and grueling, I realize that facing this reality was necessary in order to give purpose to the suffering endured by James Byrd, Jr.
Summary of Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas
On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation?s imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene and extends into the minds of the young men who so casually ended a man?s life. She takes us inside the prison in which two of them met for the first time, and she shows how it played a major role in shaping their attitudes?racial and otherwise. The result is a deeply engrossing psychological portrait of the accused and a powerful indictment of the American prison system?s ability to reform criminals. Finally, King writes with candor and clarity about how the events of that fateful night have affected her?as a black woman, a native Texan, and a journalist given the agonizing assignment of covering the trials of all three defendants. More than a spectacular true-crime debut, Hate Crime is a breathtaking work of reportage and a searing look at how the question of race continues to shape life in America.
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