Skip to main content

Picking Cotton-Injustice, Memory, Forgiveness & Reconciliation - A Book Review

Ronald Cotton,
The Innocence Project
Ronald Cotton - Innocence Project
Picking Cotton (The book)



 PICKING COTTON     

Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

By

  Jennifer Thompson-Cannino

  & Ronald Cotton

     With

  Erin Torneo

Reviewed By

  Geoffrey W. Sutton

 

I was interested in  Picking Cotton  for several reasons. As a psychologist and researcher I have helped people deal with interpersonal offenses for over 45 years. My focus has been on forgiveness and reconciliation. But there are more lessons in this book. In view of recent events the book serves to illustrate social injustice and racism. In addition, we see the serious problem of faulty eyewitness testimony evident in the experiments of Elizabeth Loftus. So for these reasons, I recommend this book to a broad spectrum of readers. And would especially recommend it to my colleagues in counselling and mental health.



The book opens with the horrible account of Jennifer’s rape. She’s a young white college student in bed in her own home. Somehow she concentrated on his features—then, when the opportunity arose, she ran to a neighbor who called the police. As the story unfolds, Jennifer is examined at a hospital and eventually reviews a lineup of seven black men. She identifies Ronald Cotton—hence the title, Picking Cotton. Jennifer was a confident witness but she was wrong with devastating effects.

In Part 2, Ronald Cotton tells his story. He borrowed a neighbor’s car for his required appearance at the Burlington Police Department. It was the last time he would be a free man for eleven years.


The details of Ronald Cotton's struggle for justice reveal the horrors systemic injustice and prejudice. Ron’s path to freedom is long and tortuous. Eventually, Ron is released following the identification of the man who actually raped Jennifer. We learn how Ron and Jennifer meet and later work to address injustice. Their meeting also led to forgiveness and reconciliation.


Stories like Picking Cotton have brought to light the importance of psychological science work on the limitations of eyewitness testimony and bias in police lineups. (Read more about memory and the misinformation effect). In the aftermath of Picking Cotton, much of the focus has appropriately been on the problems on eyewitness testimony and social injustice. However, the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation to wellness adds additional value to Picking Cotton.

 BUY PICKING COTTON on   AMAZON


 Cite this review

Sutton, G.W. (2020, December 1). Picking Cotton-Injustice, Memory, Forgiveness & Reconciliation. Sutton Reviews. https://suttonreviews.suttong.com/2020/12/picking-cotton-injustice-memory.html 


Read more stories and psychological research about Forgiveness and Reconciliation.


Book Reference


Thompson-Cannino, J. & Cotton, R. (2009). Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

 Video from YouTube





 Links to Connections

Checkout My Page    www.suttong.com

  

My Books  AMAZON          and             GOOGLE STORE

 

FOLLOW me on   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton   X   @Geoff.W.Sutton

 

PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

 

Articles: Academia   Geoff W Sutton   ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton 

 

 

Subscribe to my Travel Channel on YouTube

 

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Denial of Death and the Meaningful Life- Book Review

  The Denial of Death   by Ernest Becker A Review by Geoffrey W. Sutton The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.  — Ernest Becker, xvii I completed a recent reading of this old classic yesterday (13 December, 2015) because I was interested in Becker’s contribution to Terror Management Theory, which I find so helpful in understanding the ways U.S. leaders are publicly responding to terrorist activities. Becker’s ideas are more than forty years old and many have not withstood the test of time. However, his basic premise that we deny the reality of death in many ways remains valid
3 comments
Read more

JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE - A book review

  JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE How White Evangelicals        Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation By    Kristin Kobes Du Mez Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton   Kristin Kobes Du Mez begins and ends her assault on militaristic white American evangelical men with their contemporary sociopolitical leader, former president, Donald Trump. In the Introduction we learn the short doctrinal list of what it means to be a Bible-believing evangelical, but the author posits that American evangelicals are more than a set of theological statements. Instead, since the early 1900s they have embraced a John Wayne view of what it means to be a Christian man—a powerful warrior for country and God—a man who leads his troops into battle to uphold the values of God’s chosen people, the Americans. It was the title, Jesus and John Wayne , that was off-putting. I didn’t grow up with John Wayne films or a love of American westerns. I was after all British and even after living in America, we
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I am not a Christian - Bertrand Russell - A book Review

 Why I Am Not A         Christian By   Bertrand Russell Reviewed by   Geoffrey W. Sutton   I am still surprised by the memory of a professor at a highly conservative college who included Russell’s book, Why I am not a Christian as assigned reading in a Philosophy of Christianity class. I don’t recall what the professor said about the collection of essays so many years ago. However, it is a classic work and deserves at least a look by those like me interested in the psychology of religion and related fields like philosophy. The lead essay answers the author’s question in the title. It was presented as a lecture at the Battersea Town Hall (London, England) in 1927. His logical thinking is evident early on as he attempts to define the concept, Christian . He considers a few options and concludes first, that a Christian must believe in God and immortality, and second, a Christian must at least think of Christ as the “best and wisest of men.” The essay proceeds to explain w
Post a Comment
Read more