Monster
Walter Dean Myers
Amistad
Fiction, YA Crime/Suspense
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Institutions, Urban Tales
****
Description
Sixteen-year-old Steve knows just how he'd film his life if it were a movie. He tries to keep thinking of it that way, as a movie, because the reality - sitting in prison, on trial for felony murder, facing the very real possibility of life in jail or even the death penalty - is just too much to bear. The law says everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but even his own defense attorney seems to have doubts, and half the jury probably took one look at the Black kid at the defense table and made up their minds on the spot. As the trial unfolds, testimony and flashbacks fill in the story of how Steve found himself here, with his fate resting on the competence of a lawyer and the judgement of twelve strangers and a system that has sent so many other young Black men away.
Review
As one might expect from the title alone, let alone the description, this is a harrowing and often bleak tale of a young future gone awry - not just in a single fateful moment, but in the many steps leading up to that moment, for all that Steve himself never touched a gun or pulled a trigger. Using the ongoing film script format to show his current life moving between the courtroom and prison and the past that led up to the incident in question, he may not be an entirely reliable narrator in a story where there are few absolute villains or heroes. Society itself has failed on some level, for this to be happening at all, but society itself is not on trial: Steve and a co-defendant are, for the robbery that turned into a murder. What emerges is a stark picture of the dehumanizing nature of the incarceration system, and the slender, imperfect promise of the justice system that decides guilt and punishment with a less than impartial hand. Guilty or not, Steve will never be the same boy he was before, indelibly marked by his experiences. Once in a while, the interrogations, and particularly the summations, in the trial room felt a little long, but overall it's a powerful and unflinching look at a part of modern society many would prefer not to examine.