Small Great Things

by Jodi Picoult

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

When we finally emerged at Seventy-second Street, the world was white. It was not just that Central Park was caught in a snow globe. The faces of the men and women shuddering through the storm to get to work looked nothing like mine, or like my cousins’ or neighbors’.

I had seen the very start of someone. I’d been with that baby before anyone or anything in this world had a chance to disappoint him.

love has nothing to do with what you’re looking at, and everything to do with who’s looking.

White people don’t mean half the offensive things that come out of their mouths, and so I try not to let myself get rubbed the wrong way.

Corinne is one of those people for whom life is just the space between crises.

Was our familiarity due to friendship, or geography?

“Slavery isn’t Black history,” I point out. “It’s everyone’s history.”