Under the Thumb gives you the gist of the stories in its subtitle. Stories of Police Oppression. It’s in the news every day. It’s not going away. No matter how many good officers there might be, the type of person who thrives on controlling others, the type of person who likes to bully others… they are attracted to this sort of work, and they are everywhere.
What I found poignant and most meaningful in these stories was not the descriptions of brutality and mistreatment, but the variety of the voices and characters. A young man finds he is dating a girl whose uncle, a police officer, beat him when he was a boy. A musician is thrown in prison for walking down a road. An artist is beaten for a small pieces of graffiti.
Kids, wives, neighbors, and even some messages you might not expect… all of that awaits you in these pages. S. A. Cosby and the others who helped edit and put this together did a commendable job. Some of the stories are told more eloquently than others, but none of them left me untouched. An important book I would recommend to anyone.