Authors: Bell Gale Chevigny
With each second, the pain in my chest grew more unbearable â inside I was on fire. I began spinning and tumbling, my head falling backward and forward. I could feel the explosion in my chest heaving upward, as the pain began to burst into a billion pieces of light ⦠and then I was falling, falling toward the sky, higher and higher, until I could no longer see beneath the clouds, until darkness began to engulf me. It was almost over. “C'mon, Nat, warp speed, man.”
Yeah,
I thought,
I do have something to say
⦠then I felt the rush of warm wind, and I breathed out.
1995,California State Prison-San Quentin
San Quentin, California
MarlenÄ squatted on the hospital rooftop
agitated, wary
her frayed bonds with life
ready to snap, while
below, a rush of blue and gray uniforms
pleading voices, as her
sister convicts
piled mattresses on the ground
that saved her
when she leapt
over the precipice
Today, guards tramp on that roof
and under it,
workmen erect walls within walls
seal openings
to air and light
tear apart the old balcony to
build a steel mesh and iron cage
Death row
they are building
death row
here,
at Bedford Hills
on the third floor of the hospital
next to the nursery
a shadow
over the wide-eyed infants,
robust toddlers,
+ An exercise given by Hettie Jones at the Bedford Hills Writing Workshop.
a curse upon their mothers,
all of us
MarlenÄ rests quietly
her wounds heal
but the mad fury that drove her
is loose
sweeping over the prison
through this land
waiting to taste first blood
no mattresses next time
no mercy
1995, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
Bedford Hills, New York
| p.vii | I write because I can't fy . See Chevigny, “All I Have, A Lament and a Boast': Why Prisoners Write,” Prose and Con: Essays on Prison Literature in the United States , ed. D. Quentin Miller (Jeferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005). |
| p.x | “Like slave ⦠Auburn Prison.” With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998). pp. 265-69. |
| p.x | “In July ⦠hunger strike.” Tom Wicker, A Time to Die (New York: Quadrangle, 1975), pp. 6-8. |
| p.xi | “Penologists Andrew ⦠United States.” Andrew von Hirsch, Doing Justice (New York, Hill and Wang, 1976) Robert Martinson, “What Works? Questions and Answers about Prison Reform,” Public Interest 35: 22-54. |
| p.xii | “As former ⦠ever seen.” Prison Life (January-February 1996): 38. |
| p.xii | “A predatory ⦠more overtime.” Victor Hassine, Life without Parole: Living in Prison Today (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 1996), 31, 37, 65. |
| p.xiii | “Tere's little violence ⦠than men do.” All too familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons , Human Rights Watch, Women's Rights Project (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996). |
| p.xiii | “Tis nation ⦠in London.” Adam Liptak “U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs that of Other Nations.” New York Times , April 23, 2008. |
| p.xiv | “And juveniles ⦠without parole.” Ashley Nellis and Ryan S. King, “No exit: Te Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America,” Sentencing Project, July, 2009. |
| p.xiv | “Te UN Convention ⦠or coercion.” Lance Tapley, “Mass Torture in America: Notes from the Supermax Prisons,” Prison Legal News , February, 2009. |
| p.xiv | “Isolation can ⦠mental illness.” Mental Illness, Human Rights, and U.S. Prisons (New York: Human Rights Watch, September 22, 2009.) |
| p.xiv | “Te American public ⦠in Connecticut.” Leah Caldwell, “Iraqi Dungeons and Torture Chambers under New American Trained Management.” Prison Legal News, December, 2004. |
| p.xiv | Jamie Fellner, “U.S.: Improve Weak Standards to End Prison Rape,” Human Rights Watch, April 4, 2011. |
| p.xiv | “A s the ACLU ⦠of whites.” Charles M. Blow, “Drug Bust,” New York Times , June 22, 2011 |
| p.xiv | “For Michele Alexander ⦠marginalization.” Te New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). Robert Perkinson also draws the Jim Crow analogy in Texas Tough.: Te Rise of America's Prison Empire (New York: Picador, 2010). |
| p.xv | “In 2011 ⦠decriminalizing drugs.” Former leaders of Colombia and Mexico, who served on the Commission, spoke of the great harm the drug war does to their peoples. Mexico has lost 34,000 to the drug war. |
| p.xv | “Re-entry has ⦠reintegrate successfully.” See Jeremy Travis, But Tey All Come Back: Facing the Challenge of Prisoner Re-entry (Washington, D.C., Urban Institute Press, 2005). |
| p.xvii | “To be ⦠be listening.” Kathrin Perutz, “P.E.N. and Prisons,” Witness: Special Issue: Writing from Prison (Fall 1987): 149. |
| p.xviii | The bibliography ⦠through 1981. H. Bruce Franklin, “An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works by American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners,” Prison Literature in America: The Victim As Criminal and Artist. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 291-341. |
| p.xviii | Under Reagan ⦠gone under. Joseph Bruchac, “The Decline and Fall of Prison Literature,” Small Press (Jan./Feb. 1987): 28-32. |
| p.xviii | Now, with ⦠been suppressed. McGrath Morris, Jailhouse founalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1998). See Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, eds. Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg of The Angolite, New York: Times Books, 1992, and The Ceiling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry, eds. Daniel Burton-Rose, Dan Pens, and Paul Wright of Prison Legal News, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998. |
| p.48 | The beat⦠Fernandez. A 1970s study group in Greenhaven Prison found that over 75 percent of the New York State prison population came from just seven New York City neighborhoods. Prison Life (October 1996): 50. |
| p.71 | You ought ⦠the men. “Ain't No More Cane on This Brazis.” Sung by Ernest Williams and group, Sugarland, Texas, 1933. Recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax. Library of Congress Music Division, Archive of American Folk Music. |
| Recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax. Library of Congress Music Division, Archive of American Folk Music. | |
| p.71 | Some historians ⦠in 1796. See Christianson, pp.94-106. Christiansen argues that the replacement of penal slavery with racial slavery was legitimized through the Thirteenth Amendment. See also H. Bruce Franklin, “Introduction,” Prison Writing in 20th-century America (New York: Penguin, 1998), pp.1-20. |
| p.72 | Founded in ⦠goods annually. Pollock, 124. |
| p.72 | Since 1990⦠private companies. Florida Corrections Commision, 1997 Annual Report, p.1. |
| p.97 | In prison⦠high school. The Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture, “Research Brief: Education As Crime Prevention” (September 1997): 4-5. |
| p.98 | Women in prison ⦠the results. For example, the women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility have published Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison (New York: Overlook, 1998). |
| p.98 | “A lack ⦠to empathize.” Small Press (Jan./Feb. 1987): 87. |
| p.98 | In “Colorado ⦠of react.” Prison Life (June 1994): 46. |
| p.175 | In the ⦠white person. Comprising 9 percent of the general population but 16 percent of prisoners, Hispanics are the fastest-growing race behind bars. Marc Mauer, Responding to Racial Disparities in Prison and Jail Populations (The Sentencing Project: Washington, D.C., 1998), pp.1-2. |
| p.175 | “I've heard ⦠old biases.” Richard Strarton, “Common Ground,” Prison Life (October 1994): 3. |
| p.218 | Even if⦠but failed.” Bruchac, The Light from Another Country: Poetry from American Prisons (Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1984}: p.151. |
| p.285 | On the ⦠home again. The Listening Chamber (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997). |
| p.301 | (Since Pennsylvania., .as whites.) United States of America: Rights for All (New York: Amnesty International Publications, 1998), p.109. |
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