The Sun Does Shine

The Sun Does Shine: How I found life and freedom on death row

From the publishers:

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

My thoughts:

In education, we call things like grit, values, persistence, work ethic, faith, and collaboration as "soft" skills. They are off content skills that are not graded or tested, but students who have these soft skills seem better equipped not just for school but for life. 

The wrenching memoir of an innocent black man who spent 30 years on death row in Alabama not for any crimes he committed but for being poor, black and convenient is really a model of how these soft skills helped Mr. Hinton to survive on death row. He not only survived, but he helped others, even if it was just to help others to escape their minds for a little while. 

This is a story of compassion and unconditional love. In this world of #blacklivesmatter, this is a story of hope, faith and love. 

Digital galley provided by Net Galley and Macmillan Publishers for an honest review

Published March 27, 2018