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Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice
Top of the pile
86
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
84/100Critics
88/100Scholars
Author:
Yusef Salaam
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Date:
May 18, 2021
No one's life is the sum of the worst things that happened to them, and during Yusef Salaam's seven years of wrongful incarceration as one of the Central Park Five, he grew from child to man, and gained a spiritual perspective on life and channeled his energy and pain into something positive, not just for himself but for other marginalized people and communities.
What The Reviewers Say
Despite this horrific miscarriage of justice, Salaam's compelling memoir is one of astounding warmth.
... powerful.
It’s easy to see how Salaam became a motivational speaker, writing throughout the book of transforming traumatic experiences: 'you must take the emotions that come up in your reflection and move that energy into something purposeful.' An uplifting and hopeful book about a terrible miscarriage of justice and the lives impacted..
Punctuating his prose with memorable images, Salaam denounces a system of injustice built on the backs of Black people, demonized as born criminals. Remarkably, though Donald Trump himself made his first foray into politics on the backs of the Five, the author mentions him by name just once in a book rich in self-knowledge and compassion.
