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Caged: A Teacher's Journey Through Rikers, or How I Beheaded the Minotaur
An honest and gripping memoir of one man’s life-altering experience teaching at Rikers Island.
When Brandon Dean Lamson first accepted the teaching position at Horizon Academy, a court-mandated academic program for eighteen- to twenty-year-old prisoners at Rikers Island, even he had to question his own motivation. Why was he risking his life every day at a prison notorious for being one of the most dangerous places to work? Was it his small way of making amends for the blatant and pervasive racism he witnessed every day growing up in his small Southern town? Or was it to prove he wasn’t afraid to go where his own father, a prominent District Court judge, had sent both the innocent and guilty alike? In Caged , Lamson provides an intimate view of his transformative experience teaching inmate students on Rikers Island.
Rikers Island resonates as a place of horrific violence and inescapable punishment, one of the last places in America that truly invoke overwhelming, universal fear. Set in the late 1990s―a time when the city was rapidly changing into an increasingly corporatized and policed space― Caged exposes a criminal justice system designed to thwart efforts to rehabilitate and educate the incarcerated. Lamson’s first-hand account illustrates how penitentiaries too often use prison education as another means of control.
Written in a gripping, confessional narrative, Caged explores the consequential impact of Lamson’s move to New York City, his childhood experiences with racial justice, and his journey working in four prisons over the course of three years. Lamson provides glimpses into his own self-destructive behavior as parallels emerge between his life on Rikers and his personal life, his white privilege, and how his behavior progressively entraps him in ways that resonate with the challenges faced by his students. The book intimately captures how incarceration changes both prisoner and educator alike as Lamson struggles to integrate into life outside prison after his departure from Horizon Academy.
When Brandon Dean Lamson first accepted the teaching position at Horizon Academy, a court-mandated academic program for eighteen- to twenty-year-old prisoners at Rikers Island, even he had to question his own motivation. Why was he risking his life every day at a prison notorious for being one of the most dangerous places to work? Was it his small way of making amends for the blatant and pervasive racism he witnessed every day growing up in his small Southern town? Or was it to prove he wasn’t afraid to go where his own father, a prominent District Court judge, had sent both the innocent and guilty alike? In Caged , Lamson provides an intimate view of his transformative experience teaching inmate students on Rikers Island.
Rikers Island resonates as a place of horrific violence and inescapable punishment, one of the last places in America that truly invoke overwhelming, universal fear. Set in the late 1990s―a time when the city was rapidly changing into an increasingly corporatized and policed space― Caged exposes a criminal justice system designed to thwart efforts to rehabilitate and educate the incarcerated. Lamson’s first-hand account illustrates how penitentiaries too often use prison education as another means of control.
Written in a gripping, confessional narrative, Caged explores the consequential impact of Lamson’s move to New York City, his childhood experiences with racial justice, and his journey working in four prisons over the course of three years. Lamson provides glimpses into his own self-destructive behavior as parallels emerge between his life on Rikers and his personal life, his white privilege, and how his behavior progressively entraps him in ways that resonate with the challenges faced by his students. The book intimately captures how incarceration changes both prisoner and educator alike as Lamson struggles to integrate into life outside prison after his departure from Horizon Academy.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published March 28, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 28, 2023
In Caged, Brandon Dean Lamson tells the story of his time teaching inmates on Rikers Island, finding himself in conflict both with students and with the guards. There is definitely a unique culture to the world of incarceration. I found myself thinking about the Stanford Prison Experiments in which ordinary people were randomly assigned to play either inmate or guard. The subjects' behavior changed during the short period of the experiment, guards becoming more domineering and sadistic and inmates becoming more scheming and duplicitous than these people were in their regular lives. One sees evidence of this strange power dynamic and the resulting unusual behavior throughout the book. Lamson and the other teachers and staff involved with the school often saw the guards as vicious fascists, but - at the same time -- they couldn't trust the prisoners because learning was never an inmate's top priority but rather was a combination of survival and maintenance of status.
As interesting as the story inside the wire is, it's equally fascinating to learn what happens with Lamson outside his workday. The author is forthright about changes in his own psychology as he developed a need to work out his own violent tendencies as well as uncharacteristic sexual behavior. Lamson describes time spent in a boxing gym and S&M dungeon in service of these changes.
The book also offers some insight into what teaching methods worked or didn't. Some of this pedagogical insight might be exclusively applicable to jails and prisons, but some would likely be of use to regular teachers, particularly in dealing with troubled or challenging kids. Lamson is also forthright about his own teaching missteps and failures, while offering the reader insight to what he learned from those teachers who seemed to be unusually effective.
I found this to be a fascinating book. It's well-written and thought-provoking. I'd highly recommend it for readers of nonfiction.
As interesting as the story inside the wire is, it's equally fascinating to learn what happens with Lamson outside his workday. The author is forthright about changes in his own psychology as he developed a need to work out his own violent tendencies as well as uncharacteristic sexual behavior. Lamson describes time spent in a boxing gym and S&M dungeon in service of these changes.
The book also offers some insight into what teaching methods worked or didn't. Some of this pedagogical insight might be exclusively applicable to jails and prisons, but some would likely be of use to regular teachers, particularly in dealing with troubled or challenging kids. Lamson is also forthright about his own teaching missteps and failures, while offering the reader insight to what he learned from those teachers who seemed to be unusually effective.
I found this to be a fascinating book. It's well-written and thought-provoking. I'd highly recommend it for readers of nonfiction.
April 6, 2023
In Caged, poet Brandon Lamson turns to prose. The result: a tough, brutally honest yet often lyrical work of literature. Compelling are his reflections about both Rikers Island, a place of despairing fatalism, and his own chaotic state of being. It is a narrative that moves about quickly, jumping from memory to memory, this in itself expressive of the nature of these two mirrored lurching worlds. Still, it manages to hold together as one piece and seamlessly to lead the reader through twin labyrinths. As I followed Lamson's struggle with trying to keep from being infected with the forlornness he sees 0n Rikers Island while, at the same time, trying to face and extract himself from the same kind maelstrom he sees in his own life, I found myself reflecting on the worlds I have inhabited during various stages of my life, some much like Lamson's in this period of his, when I too had to grapple with what I saw in those worlds being mirrored in mine. I took this to be Cage’s main theme. The book is not a pessimistic, nihilistic dirge mired in angry condemnation of all that is not right. Threaded throughout there is this shining light: despite the sordidness of Rikers Island and of his own way of living, Lamson still glimpses hope, for the inmates and for himself, a hope that by daring to look into the mirror and not allowing the reflection to defeat them, they will find deliverance. Some of the inmates have gone on to realize this hope I am sure, as I think has this author.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews