first person
What’s in a Name?
Being forced by prison authorities to publish anonymously caused me to reflect on the long history of Black authors choosing names in response to state violence.
first person
14 posts in ‘first person’
first person
39 Years
I rejected a plea deal and chose instead to go to trial. I would not understand until too late that I had placed a target on my back.
first person
On Aging and Dying in Captivity
This year I passed a grim milestone: I’ve now been in captivity longer than I’d been alive when I was arrested.
first person
Stripped of Dignity
The routinized violence of prison strip searches robs incarcerated men of their health, sexuality, and so much more.
first person
Hell Is Real and It Is Beige
Some of the greatest violence of prisons is hidden, in plain view, within their banality.
first person
The Banality of Mandatory Surcharges
In New York and elsewhere, exploitative court-ordered fees shouldn't saddle a person who is already poor and criminalized.
first person
Ink from Honey
Poetry can help incarcerated authors to reclaim the story of their life.
first person
Closed Doors
Prison is no place for grief and closure. Yet even as I mourned, glimmers of love and life surrounded me.
first person
Learning to Live
For incarcerated people, prison education programs can offer not only knowledge but also hope that a different future is possible.
advocacy
Hope Against Hope
A candid portrait of the experience of fighting for clemency in Louisiana—a route to freedom now severely threatened by the state’s new carceral governor.
first person
Censoring Women’s Health
In prison, even learning about your own reproductive health is met with repression.
first person
Misadventures in Mail Censorship
An incarcerated writer’s grievances against a sad new normal of censorship and mail obstruction in a Pennsylvania prison.
first person
Envisioning Futures
The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.
first person
No Leaving Rikers
For the scores of people who have suffered on Rikers Island, their experiences, and scars, of living through it remain long after release.