A Stone of Hope: A Memoir by Jim St. Germain. 

4/5 rating. 

Book #30 of 2020. Read May 14, 2020.

This book is the story of Jim’s very tough life living in poverty, fighting through a myriad of issues to escape his troubled youth and become an advocate to “give voice to the voiceless”. Jim was born in Haiti in abject poverty and was brought by his family to New York in the hopes of a better life. On moving to the US, he lived in the projects. With all of the crime, poverty, and want surrounding Jim, he began to drink and do drugs, get in fights, and to deal drugs.

He spent years living in these conditions where almost no one escapes and without the resources, support, or even understanding that there was a better life. Luckily, after he was arrested, he was sent to a program which finally reached him and began to turn his life around.

I think this book should be compulsory reading for everyone in the US. People are so quick to throw kids in jail for mistakes they make, without taking any chance to understand the situation that led there. I think Jim’s story really lays bare the incredible hardships that poverty-stricken families face, and the all-encompassing issues faced by people worried about where their next meal is coming from, and if they will make it home safe.

I wrote down so many incredible quotes from this book!

Quotes:

“I was grateful to have a home, but over time, I resented my grandmother’s apartment. It was a stinging reminder of the gap between what I thought America was and the reality I had stepped into.”

“It was impossible to focus on schoolwork while I was consumed with getting home in one piece.”

“That harassment was brutal; society makes kids pay twice for being poor.”

“It is easier for a lot of young people in this city and in some communities to buy a gun than buy a book. It is easier in some communities to find a gun than it is to find some fresh vegetables.”

“In that world, any activity that keeps a child off the streets is lifesaving.”

“There’s an identity element at work too – we can only conceive of available options. When we watch television the only successful people that look like us are professional athletes and entertainers. Television’s largest role in a lot of our homes is not as distraction or escape. It is as a mirror.”

“The United States is really terrible at turning boys into men.”

“That disconnect – between whose approval we were seeking and whose approval we should have been seeking – was massive.”

“It was all done under the guise of having a good time; we were letting loose, partying, not giving a fuck. But we were all self-medicating. It seemed the only answer for our plight: hopelessness braided with loss, poverty, and the constant threat of violence. I was lonely, no matter how many people were around.”

“The law treats crack more severely than cocaine. At the time, crack sentencing was literally a hundred times more severe than powder cocaine. The irony is that crack is actually more diluted than powder cocaine; it can be stretched out with baking soda and cooked up, which is what makes it cheap. The harsher penalties reveal racial bias and embedded systemic issues: it’s much easier to arrest crack dealers on street corners than suburban kids or Wall Street brokers.”

“There’s a reason it’s called the system: it’s a well-oiled machine that takes in troubled kids and churns out hardened men.”

“The level of compassion I felt from Christine was more important to me at that moment than any details about the legal process. All that felt abstract. The law has to be more than an intellectual exercise. Being seen as a person in that fragile moment can change a child’s life, help him feel a basic sense of security in a terrifying world. I don’t know how much attorneys understand this: a child about to lose his freedom is looking at this adult as maybe his only hope.”

“The future. If you don’t leave the street alone, this will be the rest of your life. What you have left of it.”

“Though it was comforting to see Christine, who always brought a smile and support, my three-minute appearance in front of the judge was just a formality. Most decisions were made before we got there. We were pawns in the larger moves made by invisible hands. It’s a strange feeling, having your life decided as if you weren’t even there. Most judges wouldn’t address us, and prosecutors and defense attorneys talked about us in the third person, and in legal jargon that we didn’t have a prayer of understanding. It seemed like we didn’t even need to be there. Most kids leave their day in court feeling as unreal and small as they do in the cell.”

“The process was backward – throughout my childhood I needed help, support, and services. But it wasn’t until I got arrested that people and services came out of the shadows.”

“People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead. – James Baldwin”

“The wrong friends can lead you to trouble. But even more, they can tear down hopes, dreams, and possibilities. We know, too, that the right friends inspire you, pull you through, rise with you.”

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

“I recognized that books are the gatekeepers to many of the answers we seek.”

“King’s County Hospital was the first Level 1 trauma center in the United States: through those doors come a lot of gunshots and stabbings, a lot of blood and gruesome wounds. And that’s how they’re seen – as injuries, not as people who have them. It’s the only way for doctors and nurses to keep going. They need to clear the beds, so they patch you up and send you back out – like in a war zone.”

“Society doesn’t accept young black men – formerly incarcerated ones, especially – with open arms and the resistance goes both ways. Re-entry is slow and brutal; it’s obvious to me why so many people don’t make it. It’s work, from the moment you wake to the moment you go to bed.”

“My outside world was colliding with my inside world. I had a foot in each, but wasn’t planted in either, so I floated in a kind of purgatory.”

“But it wasn’t about the experiences or the things, it was about the people. Marty and Christine both taught me how wide and open the word ‘family’ can be.”

“The law has historically been a weapon used to bring others down. But armed with it, you can make that power work in your favor. You can uplift and empower those same people who have been oppressed by it.”

“If the young are not initiated into the village, they’ll burn it down just to feel the warmth.”

“What became clear to me was something I once heard: hurt people hurt people.”

“Close to Home would aim to recognize that a juvenile is not a convict, though he can become one through the neglect and abuse of a cruel and arbitrary system.”

“‘We don’t do anything that’s easy,’ I concluded. ‘We do what’s necessary.’”

“According to the Pew Research Center, a staggering 38 percent of black children in America are living in poverty, which reads like nothing less than a pandemic.”

“If we invest in our youth’s future, I truly believe that there will be fewer violent crimes. In order to achieve this, we need to change not just policies, but hearts. Rehabilitation is the key to public safety. For far too long, justice has been practiced solely as punishment. I believe that such a narrow view is detrimental to the progress we need to make within the juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as in society as a whole.”

“We can’t continue to victimize people for failing if we don’t give them a chance to succeed.”

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