After Jail, Before Freedom tells the story of five men who get out of prison and try to stay out. Joined together by their experience in a writing class at the Richmond City Jail, which led to their first book, Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, this sequel picks up where their stories left off: With each man trying to figure out how to stay free. It is an onerous journey marked by the stigma of a felony conviction, racial discrimination, unstable living conditions, the allure of addiction, enduring trauma, ongoing problems with the criminal justice system, the promise of change, and, at times, the reality of it.
Detailing the formative and transformative memories of ten men, Writing Our Way Out is the creative culmination of a writing class that began in the Richmond City Jail in Virginia, and grew into a journey to re-entry. Compiled in a narrative by their teacher, Dr. David Coogan, these stories explore the conditions, traps, and turning points on the path to imprisonment in modern America, as well as the redemptive and rehabilitative power of memoir.
The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration tells the story of mass incarceration in America through the writers who experienced it first-hand. Revolutionary writers like George Jackson, Assata Shakur, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, seeking liberation not just from prison but the oppressive structure of society that sustains it. Witnesses like Wilbert Rideau, Jack Henry Abbott, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, seeking self-determination and justice from these increasingly cavernous prison warehouses. And survivors like Shaka Senghor, Jarvis Masters, and Susan Burton in the 21st century seeking healing from the psychological trauma that led to prison as well as the trauma of prison.