|
Writing My Wrongs:
Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison by
Shaka Senghor
c.2016,
Convergent Books
$26.00 /
$35.00 Canada
269 pages
By Terri
Schlichenmeyer
The Truth
Contributor
You can’t judge
a book by its cover.
Even so, we do it all the time:
we see someone’s outside and think we know what’s inside. We
base it on his looks, or his youthful indiscretions –
things, as in the new book Writing My Wrongs by
Shaka Senghor, that he may deeply regret.
Little James White wanted to be
a doctor when he grew up.
Enveloped by the love of his
parents, he was secure in the idea that he could maintain
his honors status and do good for people in his Detroit
community. But then his parents split, reconciled, and split
again; his mother took her frustrations out on him and she
kicked him out of her house. |
 |
|
Jay was just “a little boy” of
14 then, but it didn’t take long for someone to offer him a
job selling cocaine at five dollars a “rock.” He started
earning big money, wearing cool clothes, getting girls,
smoking crack.
By 17, he’d been in trouble with
the law and had been given many second chances. By 18, he’d
been shot in the leg and foot.
By 19, he was in prison for
shooting another man, killing him.
In his first six weeks in County
Jail, Jay saw it all: rape, robbery, beat-downs, murder. He
learned the “law of the jungle” and knew that he could never
let small disrespects slide. It was a whole new world, but a
sentence of up to 42 years for firearm possession and murder
put him in another universe.
Years later, transferred to
various prisons within the state and carrying a new name and
a new assault charge, Shaka Senghor promised himself
repeatedly that he would change, only to have it beaten back
by prison life and the deep anger and guilt he carried.
Finally, mid-way through a four-and-a-half year stint in
administrative segregation, he “took a long and painful
look” at himself and equipped his cell “like a classroom,”
reconnecting with the black history he loved and the
religious studies he craved.
“But the real changes,” he says,
“came when I started keeping a journal.”
I’m glad he did that. You will
be, too, once you’ve started Writing My Wrongs, but
don’t think for a minute that this is an easy book to read.
One expects passages of
brutality in a book about prison, but author Shaka Senghor
takes it a step beyond, to something of nightmares or
movies. That he was moved from prison to prison makes the
chaos even keener. Prisoners, says Senghor, sometimes lose
track of time and readers could be forgiven for the same.
Enter the maelstrom from the safety of your sofa, in fact,
and the ending of this book – Senghor’s hard-won redemption
and afterlife – will remind you that you’ve been holding
your breath awhile.
Writing My Wrongs may be
right for a certain kind of book group. For sure, it’s
something every young person should absolutely read. It’s
uplifting, triumphant to the skies and, once you start it,
you’ll be sorry to reach its back cover. |
