Great little things

At the end of her novel, "Great Little Things," author Judy Pico says she's always wanted to write a novel about racism in the United States. From the beginning, she emphasized that she "grew up as a privileged white woman." She conducted years of research and numerous interviews to express the voices of people who weren't like her: men, teenagers, suicidal individuals, battered wives, and rape victims. She says that what drove her to write these stories was her sense of anger and her desire to give them a voice so that these people would become more aware of racism. The novel's plot is engaging, its structure is strong, and it moves at a good pace and in a smooth style. Judy Pico draws on all the stereotypical Black images: the widowed Black mother, the angry Black woman, the mother, the maid, the teenager, and the distinguished preacher. The alternation of chapters in the novel clearly shows the different points of view of Ruth, her racist white father, Turk Power, and Ruth's lawyer, Kennedy MacQuarrie. The author succeeds in letting the novel become more deeply rooted in Kennedy's narrative, the story of a white woman who believes she is more liberal than she actually is. It is Kennedy's journey to reconcile with her racist relatives and white privilege, as she realizes for the first time the pervasiveness of American racism. That is the real story here.