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
Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will...
A stunningly crafted and unsparing account of the author’s rape as a college freshman and what it took to win her case in court.
In 1981, Sebold was brutally raped on her college campus, at Syracuse University. Sebold, a New York Times Magazinecontributor, now in her 30s, reconstructs the rape and the year following in which her assailant was brought to trial and found guilty. When, months after the rape, she confided in her fiction professor, Tobias Wolff, he advised: “Try, if you can, to remember everything.” Sebold heeded his words, and the result is a memoir that reads like detective fiction, replete with police jargon, economical characterization, and film-like scene construction. Part of Sebold’s ironic luck, besides the fact that she wasn’t killed, was that she was a virgin prior to the rape, she was wearing bulky clothing, and her rapist beat her, leaving unmistakable evidence of violence. Sebold casts a cool eye on these facts: “The cosmetics of rape are central to proving any case.” Sebold critiques the sexism and misconceptions surrounding rape with neither rhetoric nor apology; she lets her experience speak for itself. Her family, her friends, her campus community are all shaken by the brutality she survived, yet Sebold finds herself feeling more affinity with police officers she meets, as it was “in [their] world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.” Just when Sebold believes she might surface from this world, a close friend is raped and the haunting continues. The last section, “Aftermath,” has an unavoidable tacked-on-at-the-end feel, as Sebold crams over a decade’s worth of coping and healing into a short chapter.
Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will inspire and challenge.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85782-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.
Beloved, controversial performer discusses fame and the deeper meanings of his life.
Common, subject of Fox News’ ire following his White House poetry recitation, has long been acclaimed as a thoughtful and deft hip-hop artist. In his memoir—co-authored by Bradley (Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, 2009, etc.)—he suggests great consciousness of the cultural legacy he carries: “Chicago blackness gave me understanding, awareness, street sense, and a rhythm. I learned the way that soulful people move, act, and talk.” He portrays himself as an openhearted, curious kid, trying to understand the tumult of Chicago’s African-American South Side. Obsessed with girls from an early age, he would go to the city’s museums to meet them. At the same time, he was rhyming in private, and he gave up basketball in high school to concentrate on rap, which he saw as similarly competitive. Common writes frankly about his youthful involvement with gang culture, portrayed as an inevitable rite of passage that became increasingly violent: “Crack hit the South Side of Chicago like a balled up fist.” Varied influences—his mother, friends, artistic ambitions—steered him away from it and toward a more “conscious” existence. By 1989, his early demos as Common Sense were drawing industry attention, and he dropped out of college to pursue this calling, over his mother’s objections. Much of what follows is a funny, honest showbiz narrative, moving from hip-hop to film acting. Interestingly, each chapter begins with a “letter” to someone significant in his life: e.g., his mother and father (early chapters discuss their tumultuous relationship), Emmett Till, former girlfriend Erykah Badu and collaborator Kanye West. Additionally, his mother offers occasional italicized counterpoint. As a memoir, the book succeeds based on Common’s candor, intelligence and charm, despite occasional artificial passages and broad platitudes, and he writes powerfully about his connection with President Obama.
An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2587-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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