Book Review: Becoming Ms. Burton

Inspirational, uplifting, and informational are three words I choose to describe the memoir: Becoming Ms. Burton wrote by Cari Lynn and Susan Burton. It’s not every day you get the chance to read a book that is able to enhance your own perspective on life, but Ms. Burton’s book did just that. The story, Ms. Burton’s story, give reader’s a major glimpse into the life of a woman suffering from her unearned disadvantages and the consequences that are tied to those disadvantages. The beginning of the story starts with Susan, Ms. Burton’s former self, and takes the reader’s on a journey through Susan’s life full of hardships from growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood, to her introduction to crack cocaine. As the book moves forward, Susan’s story evolves into a bigger story that is connected to multiple social problems such as poverty, abuse, and racial discrimination in the justice system. While reading, it became quite evident to me that Becoming Ms. Burton isn’t just a story about Susan, but a common tale of a person suffering from multiple injustices in modern-day America. This is accomplished by the book covering topics of these sensitive …show more content…
Burton is split into two parts: Sue and Ms. Burton. These two parts divide Ms. Burton’s life in half, when she was a drug addict-criminal Susan and when she became Ms. Burton, the modern day Harriet Tubman according to Michele Alexander. Organizing Becoming Ms. Burton into two parts, helps highlight the book’s multiple purposes: to inform the reader’s about the hidden and problematic issues that are found within the criminal justice system, to share Ms. Burton’s story as a tale of tragedy to triumph supplying hope to those who need it, and to educate society on it’s social issues from poverty to discrimination. To achieve these, the book’s structure had to be created in such a way that it makes the reader’s channel certain emotions, all while soaking in the information that is