Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison

by Shaka Senghor

It didn’t matter what other people had done to me; ultimately, I was responsible for my anger, and for the actions that I took in response to it.

When I finally found the answer, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the words “weakness” and “strength.” See, all my life, I had confused their meaning. I thought walking away from an argument would make me appear weak and make me a loser. But in reality, it takes strength to walk away from conflict.

you can’t change a person for the better by treating him or her like an animal. The way I see it, you get out of people what you put into them, so the officers were only making their jobs harder.

real change comes only when you are completely and thoroughly disgusted with your actions and the consequences that they produce.

Black psychologist Amos Wilson argued: that the young Black male has perfected the art of being the best at being the worst.

In the ’hood, the villain is the hero, the guy people look up to. So we hang out in front of liquor stores with plastic bags in our boxers and semiautomatics tucked into our waistbands, living out our version of the American dream.

There’s a reason why so many inmates use storytelling as a coping tool. Being in prison and stripped of your freedom is painful and degrading, and each day is a fight to maintain your sanity. In order to cope, some inmates make up entirely different lives for themselves, saying anything that might help them seem different or one notch above the rest of us poor, wretched souls.

The slamming of the steel doors was a signal that the iron monster had once again been fed. My journey began.

MY PARENTS’ MARRIAGE deteriorated piece by piece, like an arthritic knee.

It didn’t matter that what I was doing was right or wrong—they had no right to beat a fourteen-year-old kid like that.