A consistently eye-opening, urgent report on the use and misuse of prisoner isolation.
How solitary confinement defined the lives of 14 former and current prison inmates.
Co-editors Pendergrass, a civil rights attorney for the ACLU, and Hoke (co-editor: Palestine Speaks, 2014), an oral historian, believe that solitary confinement “is the little-known dead end of the US criminal justice system” and that its use (and abuse) remains an atrocity. Reinforcing their viewpoints are intimate profiles of prisoners whose histories and experiences put a human face on prison trauma and aptly reflect the work both editors believe is necessary to abolish this inhumane practice. Each profile raises the more universal moral question of whether or not isolation makes the general population safer in the long run or if it’s simply a cruel and unusual method of punishment. To the editors, these biographies are emblematic of a much larger overlooked and ignored population and an issue deserving of widespread attention. Culled from two years of extensive interviews, the book shares the backgrounds of convicts varying in age and experience. Maryam, confined to “the hole” for refusing to remove a religiously sanctioned headscarf, covered her claustrophobic cell with flowers fashioned from toilet paper; Vernesia, a 25-year-old mother of three, got caught up in her fiance’s troubled past and fought for justice after he died from maltreatment; Candie, a psychologically scarred woman (who was eventually acquitted), describes her time in a rusty Rikers Island solitary cell as hellish. More harrowing is the story of Shearod, convicted of second-degree murder, who describes Michigan’s Ionia Maximum facility as loud, rat-infested, and deadly. Sonya, a transgender woman, poignantly speaks of the peace she now enjoys after years of turmoil and unrest in a penitentiary. The editors also include the deliberations and experiences of two prison officers who share their thoughts about American prison life and the controversies surrounding solitary isolation. Further bolstering this important report is an expanded appendix section providing tools for increased public awareness, the little-known history of solitary confinement, and pro-reform activism.
A consistently eye-opening, urgent report on the use and misuse of prisoner isolation.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60846-956-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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