Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Having read this, I now see how The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 was stage-managed. First, you suck people in with amusing childhood remembrances and get them all chuckling. Then you serve them what seems to be the climax and let them settle back down. At the very end you slam them with deadly peril, made to appear a little less deadly in the case of this book because all the narration seems to take place from inside a ham costume.
Both are powerful books and move me to tears. Neither of them were books I wanted to read, but in the end I was glad I read them. TKAM is difficult for me to relate to, so I may have appreciated Curtis's children's book more - a book that is much less preachy and less neatly sewn up at the end. And is there anyone as saintly as Atticus Finch?
Where TKAM tells you to walk a while in another person's skin, TWGTB actually does the walk. Writing from the black point of view after the passage of 50 years (or so) shows just how slowly society changes and how far we have to go.

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