If you wind your way up the famous book spiral at the Central Library in downtown Seattle, you’ll often find interesting exhibits in The Gallery on level 8. The current exhibit, Living with Conviction: Sentenced to Debt for Life in Washington State, with its moving visual stories of dealing with overwhelming debt incurred from incarceration, might bring up strong emotions, questions, or spark an interest for a deeper understanding of injustice within the United State’s carceral system. The following books reflect on first-hand experiences with being incarcerated and take deep dives into the issues and injustices surrounding class, race, culture, and the courts.
Investigative journalist Justine Van der Leun’s new book, Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Violence, Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival, chronicles the struggles of women who have been incarcerated for defending themselves against abuse, commonly known as “criminal survival”. Van der Leun sent surveys to over 10,000 women, receiving 1,000 responses regarding the traumatic events that brought them to prison. “The overwhelming through-line tying them together is the ‘tacit approval’ of male violence toward women in the United States” (Kirkus) and the legal system that upholds this view. This is not an easy read, as we learn in depth the harrowing abuse three women endured, as well as the consequences of defending themselves. But it is an important book that could help us move towards change.
In Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison by Gary Tyler, we learn how a wrongful conviction sent the author to death row, despite evidence that he was not involved in the crime. Tyler was convicted as a teenager and spent most of his adult life behind bars. In prison, he educated himself, eventually becoming an advocate for victims of a judicial system statistically more likely to convict poor and minority citizens. As the Living with Conviction exhibit points out, poverty is cyclical. With co-author Ellen Bravo, Tyler tells a hopeful, but truthful narrative.
75-year-old Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Rick Tulsky writes with passion in his first full-length book Injustice Town, about a wrongly convicted teenager, a corrupt justice system, and an incompetent police force in 1990s Kansas City. The author spent two decades researching and writing about Lamonte MacIntyre who was tried as an adult at 17 for a double homicide. He was eventually exonerated when new evidence emerged because of the persistence of his mother. She advocated for her son, wrote letter after letter to legal justice organizations and lawyers, insisting on his innocence. In 2017, MacIntyre was set free after serving 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve’s Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction posits that Chicago police—over decades—have created fictional stories in order to convict minority citizens, particularly young men from poor neighborhoods. She offers the premise that police create the narrative that black boys are dangerous and this attitude is corroborated by prosecutors and judges in the court system. Not only does Van Cleve document case after case to back up her theory, but she offers solutions that could dismantle this corrupt system.
Through an emotional, creative lens the previously incarcerated lawyer and educator Reginald Dwayne Betts writes poems based on what the prison system does to a person’s psyche. His seminal work of 2019, Felon, delves into life behind bars and the aftermath of creating a life outside. “Betts reclaims the narratives of the incarcerated to restore the dignity and humanity of those who are routinely dehumanized” (Judicature). His latest book of poems, Doggerel, brings a lighter note with themes of loyalty and companionship. Though Betts is always ruminating on masculinity, Blackness, and family, these poems look at the subject through the eyes of canines.
For more insightful books on systemic injustice, check out this SPL Booklist.
~posted by Tavi B.
