From December 17, 2003, to February 9, 2004, the prison guards and administration at this modern-day plantation changed me, rearranged me, oppressed me, regressed me, repressed me, depressed me, and undressed me in order to murder me. They had me bend [...]
It's hard to endure going to prison for life -- and hard to endure the first day in a new prison, whichever it may be, even for someone who has over eighteen years in. You don't know where anything is, no [...]
I've always turned to literature as my means of escape, especially in the midst of painful situations and despair. So, it's only fitting that I would relate most with Virginia Woolf the night I'd find my cellmate lying dead on a [...]
Tex McClain had nothing but his word. Old and sick, having outlived anyone in society who might help him, he had to live by his wits to earn coffee and cigarettes. Old Tex’s word was good. If he told you [...]
Some people knew her as Arlene Mohammed, but her name was Mo and she brought people together. Mo was a strong black woman from another era, the one that followed Jim Crow but preceded Civil Rights, the one when black men [...]
How does prison work? The worst thing about prison is not how it captures men, but how it releases them. We are given nearly nothing. Maybe a GED. Only a handful of units in Texas have college classes, where it takes [...]
"Seven-Block, fourth tier, get ready for chow," booms the lady voice over the intercom. Try making up every day to that, I think. It reminds me of the lead juror's voice at my verdict reading, "Guilty." Maybe this whole sentence [...]
They call fields. You wake up. Comfort yourself. Cuddle your sheet and pretend it's a cat. Your cellie rushes to smoke a K2 stick (spice joint), to less feel the pain. Shit if you can. Sit. Get ready. You go outside, [...]
Gabriele was an upbeat cat for a prisoner with a life sentence. I remember the day that I met him. I was having a difficult day trying to navigate all of the negativity that prison has to offer when suddenly this [...]
Courtesy of Charles Norman Big Willie Taylor came to my cell one evening after supper with a question. I knew it was a question because he never came to my cell unless he had a question that stumped [...]
I am prepared to die: My name is Edward Mike Ji, now age seventeen, newly minted adult duly dubbed and declared so by Collin County Juvenile Court, inmate number 207989, and death cannot come swiftly enough. I lay in this foul [...]
THE JURORS GASPED when they saw the photo. I was on the witness stand in federal court when my attorney entered the photo as an exhibit, and even I had never seen my arrest picture displayed in such vivid detail. [...]