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

by Shaka Senghor

the burden of all the hurt I had brought into the world. James Allen’s book As a Man Thinketh had helped me to see that I was responsible for my thoughts and the feelings that they produced. 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.

Even though I pled guilty in court, I blamed everything and everyone but myself. Pleading guilty was easy because I knew I had violated the law, but it didn’t mean I was taking full responsibility for having caused your death.

and besides, you can’t change a person for the better by treating him or her like an animal.

real change comes only when you are completely and thoroughly disgusted with your actions and the consequences that they produce. As the Honorable Elijah Muhammad once said, “One hundred percent dissatisfaction brings about one hundred percent change.” And in 1991, I was only about 40 percent dissatisfied. I

We weren’t bad people, but we had made some very bad decisions that were shaped by the bad things we had experienced. We

I got angry with God. I got angry at my parents, my teachers, and everyone else I felt had let me down. I felt unlovable, like no one cared enough about me to wonder why I had veered so far off the path. Never once did I stop to think about how much I had let myself down.

Once I had read Malcolm, I began reading with a purpose. I devoured everything from political science to erotica to contemporary fiction and philosophy—but the most important objects of my study were books of Black history, as told by people of African descent.

I had given up on myself, my parents, and my brothers and sisters—but I would be damned if I’d give up on my children. I was determined to fight against the side of me that didn’t think I could be anything more than a thuggish criminal or a predator to my community. I knew I was in for the fight of my life, but I was prepared for the battle. No matter how many times I got knocked to the ground, I would get up over and over again, until I could stand strong as a proud African man and father.

Back then, I didn’t understand the power of depression, didn’t understand how it could cause someone to end his or her life, just to get rid of the pain that person was carrying. I didn’t understand that the thought of painting the walls with my brain was a cry for help, one I should take seriously. What had happened to us that allowed us to laugh away a question like that? We

Throughout the whole ordeal, no one hugged me. No one had counseled me or told me that everything would be okay. No one came to talk to me and explain all of the emotions I was feeling. No one told me that if I didn’t find a way to deal with the fear I felt, I would become paranoid; would reach a point where I would rather victimize someone else than become a victim. No one explained to me that cars weren’t galloping chariots of death, driven by the grim reaper himself.

But I guess in the prisoncrat’s mind, being leashed like a dog didn’t violate Article 5 of the Declaration, which states that no one shall be subjected to “degrading treatment or punishment.”

He told me that I should never allow anyone to misuse me, including my comrades.

And that’s the thing about hope. In the moment when you feel it, it can seem foolish or sentimental or disconnected from reality. But hope knows that people change on a timeline that we can’t predict. We can never know the power that a word of kindness or an act of forgiveness will have on the person who needs it most.

What I now know is that my life could have had many outcomes; that it didn’t need to happen the way it did. I was once an angry, lost teenager holding a community hostage to fear and greed. Thousands of youth are making the same mistakes every day. But we weren’t born that way. None of our children are born that way. And when they get that

That’s why I’m asking you to envision a world where men and women aren’t held hostage to their pasts, where misdeeds and mistakes don’t define you for the rest of your life. In an era of record incarcerations and a culture of violence, we can learn to love those who ...