Download or read book Solitary written by Albert Woodfox and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship [and] solitary confinement in the United States.” —New York Times Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day, in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived at all was a feat of extraordinary endurance. That he emerged whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit. While behind bars in his early twenties, Albert was inspired to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a fifty-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when, on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement. Without a shred of evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice. Decades passed before Albert was finally released in February 2016. Sustained by the solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. Solitary is a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the United States and around the world.
Download or read book What He Did in Solitary written by Amit Majmudar and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning poet reflects on what sustains us in a sundered world. With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary." Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation. In pieces that include a stunning central sequence, "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," the poet is both the Huck and Jim of his own adventures. He is unafraid to face human failings: from Oxycontin addiction to Gujarat rioting, he examines--often with dark comedy--the fragility of the soul, the unchartability of pain, and the reasons we sing and grieve and make war. All-American and multitudinously alone, dancing in his confinement, Majmudar is a poet of exuberance and transcendence: "What I love here, / Poems and women mostly, / I know you can't remember," he tells his future self. "But they were worthy of my love."
Download or read book What He Did in Solitary written by Amit Majmudar and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning poet reflects on what sustains us in a sundered world. With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary." Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation. In pieces that include a stunning central sequence, "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," the poet is both the Huck and Jim of his own adventures. He is unafraid to face human failings: from Oxycontin addiction to Gujarat rioting, he examines--often with dark comedy--the fragility of the soul, the unchartability of pain, and the reasons we sing and grieve and make war. All-American and multitudinously alone, dancing in his confinement, Majmudar is a poet of exuberance and transcendence: "What I love here, / Poems and women mostly, / I know you can't remember," he tells his future self. "But they were worthy of my love."
Download or read book Solitary written by Terry A. Kupers and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When I testify in court, I am often asked: ‘What is the damage of long-term solitary confinement?’ . . . Many prisoners emerge from prison after years in solitary with very serious psychiatric symptoms even though outwardly they may appear emotionally stable. The damage from isolation is dreadfully real.” —Terry Allen Kupers Imagine spending nearly twenty-four hours a day alone, confined to an eight-by-ten-foot windowless cell. This is the reality of approximately one hundred thousand inmates in solitary confinement in the United States today. Terry Allen Kupers, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the mental health effects of solitary confinement, tells the powerful stories of the inmates he has interviewed while investigating prison conditions during the past forty years. Touring supermax security prisons as a forensic psychiatrist, Kupers has met prisoners who have been viciously beaten or raped, subdued with immobilizing gas, or ignored in the face of urgent medical and psychiatric needs. Kupers criticizes the physical and psychological abuse of prisoners and then offers rehabilitative alternatives to supermax isolation. Solitary is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the true damage that solitary confinement inflicts on individuals living in isolation as well as on our society as a whole.
Download or read book What He Did in Solitary written by Amit Majmudar and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning poet reflects on what sustains us in a sundered world. With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary." Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation. In pieces that include a stunning central sequence, "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," the poet is both the Huck and Jim of his own adventures. He is unafraid to face human failings: from Oxycontin addiction to Gujarat rioting, he examines--often with dark comedy--the fragility of the soul, the unchartability of pain, and the reasons we sing and grieve and make war. All-American and multitudinously alone, dancing in his confinement, Majmudar is a poet of exuberance and transcendence: "What I love here, / Poems and women mostly, / I know you can't remember," he tells his future self. "But they were worthy of my love."
Download or read book Hell Is a Very Small Place written by Jean Casella and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book My Time Will Come written by Ian Manuel and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiring story of activist and poet Ian Manuel, who at the age of fourteen was sentenced to life in prison. He survived eighteen years in solitary confinement—through his own determination and dedication to art—until he was freed as part of an incredible crusade by the Equal Justice Initiative. “Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us places we need to go to understand why we must do better. He survives by relying on a poetic spirit, an unrelenting desire to succeed, to recover, and to love. Ian’s story says something hopeful about our future.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy The United States is the only country in the world that sentences thirteen- and fourteen-year-old offenders, mostly youth of color, to life in prison without parole. In 1991, Ian Manuel, then fourteen, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot a young white mother of two in the face. But as Bryan Stevenson, attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has insisted, none of us should be judged by only the worst thing we have ever done. Capturing the fullness of his humanity, here is Manuel’s powerful testimony of growing up homeless in a neighborhood riddled with poverty, gang violence, and drug abuse—and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances, only to find himself, partly through his own actions, imprisoned for two-thirds of his life, eighteen years of which were spent in solitary confinement. Here is the story of how he endured the savagery of the United States prison system, and how his victim, an extraordinary woman, forgave him and bravely advocated for his freedom, which was achieved by an Equal Justice Initiative push to address the barbarism of our judicial system and bring about “just mercy.” Full of unexpected twists and turns as it describes a struggle for redemption, My Time Will Come is a paean to the capacity of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art—in Ian Manuel’s case, through his dedication to writing poetry.
Download or read book A Solitary Blue written by Cynthia Voigt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-12-12 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Newbery Honor–winning installment of the Cynthia Voigt’s classic Tillerman series. Jeff Greene was only seven when he came home from school to find a note from his mother. She felt that the world needed her more than her “grown up” son did. For someone who believed she could see the world’s problems so clearly, she was blind to the heartache and difficulties she pushed upon her son, leaving him with his reserved, undemonstrative father. So when, years later, she invites Jeff to spend summers with her in Charleston, Jeff is captivated by her free spirit and warmth, and a happiness he’s been missing fills him. But Jeff's second visit ends with a devastating betrayal and an aching feeling of loneliness. In life, there can be emotional pits so deep that seemingly nothing will grow—but if he digs a little deeper, Jeff might just come out on the other side.
Download or read book All God s Children written by Fox Butterfield and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely reissue of Fox Butterfield’s masterpiece, All God’s Children, a searing examination of the caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence over 5 generations of black Americans. Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five; his slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to their days as South Carolina slaves and documents how Willie is the culmination of generations of neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality directed at black Americans. From the terrifying scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is an unforgettable examination of the painful roots of violence and racism in America.
Download or read book Solitary Man written by Eric Landfried and published by Ambassador International. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten years after a brutal war, cannibals and humans fight over the pieces of a hardscrabble existence. Former Navy SEAL Doyle has been prowling the broken remnants of a devastated America for years. Alone in an armored bus loaded with weapons and supplies, he's grateful for his solitude. Being alone makes it easier to survive, as others can become a liability in the end of the world. But when a particularly brutal attack leaves Doyle in need of fuel and repair, he has no choice but to venture into the nearest settlement. Jonathan has been pastoring a small church of Christians in that same settlement, but when he meets Doyle he sees an opportunity to expand his ministry. Cannibals have kept everyone from traveling, but Doyle's armored transport and weapons bring hope to his small band of followers. The two men strike up a mutually beneficial bargain, but neither of them realizes that this journey will change them in ways they could never have imagined. As they search for other believers, they must battle cannibals, militant atheists, and a mysterious super soldier. Doyle's unbelief and Jonathan's faith will collide in this action-packed wasteland. Solitary Man is a gritty, action-packed post-apocalyptic story with a solid, Biblical worldview.
Download or read book Solitary written by Travis Thrasher and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2010 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the Solitary Tales suspense series will remind you what it means to believe in what you cannot see.
Download or read book The Abundance written by Amit Majmudar and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A luminous, bittersweet novel of India and the American midwest, immigrants and their first-generation children, and the power of cooking to bridge the gulfs between them When Mala and Ronak learn that their mother has only a few months to live, they are reluctantly pulled back into the midwestern world of their Indian immigrant parents--a diaspora of prosperous doctors and engineers who have successfully managed to keep faith with the old world while claiming the prizes of the new. More successfully than their children--equally ill at ease with Holi and Christmas, bhaji and barbecue, they are mysteries to their parents and themselves. In the short time between diagnosis and deterioration, Mala sets about learning everything she can about her mother's art of Indian cooking. Perfecting the naan and the raita, the two confront their deepest divisions and failures and learn to speak as well as cook. But when Ronak hits upon the idea of selling their experience as a book and a TV documentary, India and America, immigrant and native-born are torn as never before. With grace, acuity, and wry compassion, Amit Majmudar has written anew the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations in The Abundance.
Download or read book Shakespeare Saved My Life written by Laura Bates and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A female professor, a super maximum security prisoner, and how Shakespeare saved them both Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before—supermax solitary confinement. In this unwelcoming place, surrounded by inmates known as the worst of the worst, is Larry Newton. A convicted murderer with several escape attempts under his belt and a brilliantly agile mind on his shoulders, Larry was trying to break out of prison at the same time Laura was fighting to get her program started behind bars. A testament to the power of literature, Shakespeare Saved My Life is a remarkable memoir. Fans of Orange is the New Black (Piper Kerman), A Place to Stand (Jimmy Baca) and I Couldn't Help Myself (Wally Lamb) will be be inspired by the story of the most unlikely friendship, one bonded by Shakespeare and lasting years—a friendship that would, in the end, save more than one life. What readers are saying about Shakespeare Saved My Life: "I was tremendously moved by both the potential impact of Shakespeare and learning on human beings and the story of this one man." "This is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read." "I have never read a book that touched me as much as this memoir." "It is a challenging and remarkable story." "I loved this book so much. It changed my life." What reviewers are saying about Shakespeare Saved My Life: "You don't have to be a William Shakespeare fan, a prisoner, or a prison reformer to appreciate this uplifting book. "Shakespeare Saved My Life" also reveals many important truths ... about the meaning of empathy in our dealings with others"—Finger Lake Times "Shakespeare Saved My Life touches on the search for meaning in life, the struggles that complicate the path to triumph and the salvation that can be found in literature's great works ... An inspiring account."—Shelf Awareness "Opening the mind's prison proves enormously gratifying, not to mention effective ... brave, groundbreaking work"—Publishers Weekly "An eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books, self-discipline, and the Bard of Avon."—Kirkus "A powerful testament to how Shakespeare continues to speak to contemporary readers in all sorts of circumstances."—Booklist
Download or read book Solitary written by Alexander Gordon Smith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-12-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a failed escape attempt from Furnace, Alex is trapped in solitary confinement, where the real nightmares live.
Download or read book 23 7 written by Keramet Reiter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America’s prisons turned a “brutal and inhumane” practice into standard procedure Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators’ discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners. This book describes how Pelican Bay was created without legislative oversight, in fearful response to 1970s radicals; how easily prisoners slip into solitary; and the mental havoc and social costs of years and decades in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book provides essential background to a subject now drawing national attention.
Download or read book Solitary Confinement written by Lisa Guenther and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human—and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.
Download or read book The History of Richard Raynal Solitary written by Robert Hugh Benson and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary by Robert Hugh Benson
