I’ve never shed a tear reading a book. I’ve laughed, ive smirked, I’ve cussed; never teared up or cried.

This book made me tear up. Right at the part where he started to want to give up (when his mother passed), when his constant please went unanswered for years, and later denied without sometimes even a second look, and when he was finally able to say he was going home. This book was emotional, but needed and required in order to shed light on an issue that unfolds and gets exposed as we peel back the layers of issues within this society.

Anthony Ray Hinton’s story is jarring, earth-shattering, appalling, hopeful, inspiring. Although it took me some time to read this book (I did stop and recently came back to it), I never forgot his story in between. I remembered exactly where I was, and I was determined to finish this book because it is important. This is history. It is a piece of our culture that needs to be acknowledged because this is happening to more than just Mr. Hinton. In the afterward of his book, there is a list of names of people on death row. He said statistically, 1 in every 10 are innocent. There’s about a 22-page long list of names at the end of the book.

It’s something that people have said; almost an unspoken notion that there are people who are wrongly convicted or wrongly accused of crimes sitting in prison and even on death row. To see the pages and pages of names…..I really have no words.

I’m so happy to know that Mr. Hinton was able to have justice served and his freedom was given back to him, after being taken for three decades. It should have and needed to happen sooner; but his forgiveness towards the people that wronged him is beyond admirable.

This book was amazing, and I recommend everyone to read it. Part of changing this world is equipping yourself with knowledge; and what better way to learn than from a man who lived with a racial prejudice and injustice against him and had his life stripped from him for 30 years?