A Stone of Hope
A Memoir
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4.6 • 11 Ratings
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause—until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in "Boys Town," a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and punishment, St. Germain slowly found his way, eventually getting his GED and graduating from college. Then he made the bravest decision of his life: to live, as an adult, in the projects where he had lost himself, and to work to reform the way the criminal justice system treats at-risk youth.
A Stone of Hope is more than an incredible coming-of-age story; told with a degree of candor that requires the deepest courage, it is also a rallying cry. No one is who they are going to be—or capable of being—at sixteen. St. Germain is living proof of this. He contends that we must work to build a world in which we do not give up on a swath of the next generation.
Passionate, eloquent, and timely, illustrated with photographs throughout, A Stone of Hope is an inspiring challenge for every American, and is certain to spark debate nationwide.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Jim St. Germain’s A Stone of Hope is a provocative coming-of-age memoir about the author’s struggle to break free of a crime-riddled childhood. At 15, St. Germain was arrested for drugs and sent to New York's Boys Town, a rehabilitation facility where—under the guidance of mentors and counselors—he began to write a new story for himself. Now working with at-risk youth in the criminal reform system, St. Germain is an eloquent advocate for addressing the root causes of teenage crime, using reward as a tool in place of punishment. Expect to be moved.
Customer Reviews
This book was very inspiring
I read this book because of school, and honestly I’d read it again just for fun. This book shows the amazing transformation of a boy that was going down an awful path, and makes a radical 180 degree turn for a bright fruitful path. As college student this book has inspired me to push through any hardship that i face.
Powerful Read
I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. St. Germain read aloud an excerpt from his book this past summer to some of the very youth who he works to save. You could hear a pin drop in the room, the students were so captivated. It was at this moment that I new I had to read this myself. A very powerful memoir, raw and to the point. It’s a must read for young and old alike.
A Call To Action, A Testament To The Form
In short: buy this book, read this book, be changed by this book.
In long:
Jim St. Germain has given us a gift in A Stone Of Hope. The story of St. Germain's struggle, incarceration, and redemption is prophecy of what might be; what our society might be capable of if we respect our own humanity enough to honor the lives and potential of all our children.
St. Germain's unlikely survival hinged on the generosity of spirit of a faithful and prescient few: his junior high school dean, his defense attorneys, and his adopted rehabilitation family. While an entire country of black and brown children enter the juvenile justice system before they can vote, and overwhelmingly before our society has provided them an education, St. Germain's story is clear-sighted evidence of what might be if we respected our children enough to give them a tools and the opportunity to survive and overcome the situation of their birth -- that they were born brown in a world that is fundamentally weighted against them -- and where justice is rarely accessible to anyone other than whites.
But St. Germain's story doesn't stop at a survival tale; nor is it focused on self aggrandizement. Good memoirs, transformative tales like this one, give the reader more. St. Germain is singular, and a special source of knowledge and wisdom, because of how he views himself and where and how he chooses to continue to grow. His freedom was born out of human connection to a sainted few who saw his potential and insisted on its manifestation. This is what St. Germain gives now, to us in his writing and to young black and brown youth through his mentoring work in his native Crown Heights. That makes this memoir a snapshot, not a conclusive autobiography but a record of the first steps in a life on its way to inevitable greatness.
I can't wait to read the next installments.