A Knock At Midnight

A Knock At Midnight

Adult nonfiction
I have a back log of about twenty reviews. It's so that if I
get appendicitis or this COVID thing you'll still get your content
while I recuperate. So normally when I read a book I write the review
at the back of my notebook and it inches its way forward...
But when I read Brittany K. Barnett's A Knock At Midnight I
found myself thinking, Hell no! I have to get that review out this
very minute. The night before last a man was put to death for a crime
he committed when he was a teen. That's just not right. There is so
much messed up with our judicial system. Barnett schools readers on
one of the many ways it destroys lives.
When Barnett was a child her hard working mother became a
statistic in the war on drugs, a war that put a very disproportionate
number of Blacks behind bars. Her mom became addicted and
increasingly out of control. Instead of the treatment she needed she
was put in prison.
"The news stunned our family. Any semblance of normalcy was
stripped from us in that one judgement. It was so obvious that Mama's
problem was drugs. The only crime she committed was against her own
body..."
Stop reading this review a moment and try to imagine, as a child
or teen, visiting a parent in prison or, as a parent, having your
children visit you there. Imagine being punished rather than treated
for a disease.
Despite the challenges she faced in her early years Barnett
graduated from college and was admitted into law school. She was on a
fast track to the corporate law life. Then, doing research for a
class project, she encountered a woman who reminded her of the pain
she'd suffered as the child of a prison inmate. Sharanda Jones was
serving a life sentence for drugs. Sharanda Jones was a mother.
"I think it probable that just learning about Sharanda would
have been enough to make me intent on helping her some way, any way.
But there was something else, too. The thin line between us, a
proximity born of circumstances beyond our control. I just could not
go."
Sharanda Jones was only the first inmate with a drug related
life sentence she helped gain freedom.
In A Knock At Midnight Barnett schools us on the many ways the
judicial system has to deal out draconian sentences to primarily Black
defendents in drug cases...often life without possibility of parole.
(Can you imagine knowing that as long as you're breathing you'll be
locked up?) You'll be outraged when you read about some of them.
And you'll be even more outraged when you read about some of the
people serving those sentences. For some dealing was the only way to
not starve. Sharonda's quadriplegic (because of a car accident)
mother died prematurely in prison because of gross medical
negligence. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind imagining a
woman who needed help with basic bodily functions as any kind of
menace to society.
And then there's Chris who drew a life sentence because of prior
busts with drug amounts weighing less than three pennies. Chris
suffered from the excrutiating pain of largely untreated sickle cell
disease. When he was ten he saw his role model cousin bleeding to
death from a gunshot wound. When he was a teen his beloved only
brother committed suicide. And then there was the grinding poverty
and lack of legit opportunity to earn enough to put food on the table.
If you haven't yet come up with a New Years resolution, let me
suggest one. Read A Knock At Midnight and really let it speak to you.
Most of us lead relatively normal (as normal as possible in a
pandemic) lives because of the random chance elements surrounding our
births such as landing somewhere where our needs could be met and/or
being born white. While we're going about our lives--going to school,
working, parenting, doing whatever retired people do--other just as
worthwhile people are being warehoused in conditions we wouldn't want
our cats and dogs in.
And this warehousing is obscenely costly. I read somewhere that
a year in prison costs the same as a year at Harvard. What if instead
of fearing and giving up on our fellow human beings and constantly
building more prisons we invested that money in rehab, quality
education for all children, restorative rather than punitive justice,
job training, locating companies in impoverished neighborhoods, and an
adequate housing/food/medical care safety net? Maybe we could become
a nation with liberty and justice for all.
If you are getting ready to celebrate Christmas remember this.
The Babe in the manger, the Prince of Peace, the one whose birth we
celebrate grew up to be the man who reminded people of their need to
help the folks lacking basic necessities and prisoners.
We can't all be lawyers like Barnett. But there is a lot we can
do. Read the book. Share what you learn. Write letters. Sign
petitions. As for me I plan, as a reviewer, to seek out all the
similar books I can find and use my blog to spread awareness of them.
Be thinking this little light of mine. All our little lights
together can shine big time.
Jules Hathaway


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