k0rnbr34d's review
medium-paced
3.0
The first bit of this is a rehashing of what we’ve all learned about the prison system from reading The New Jim Crow or adjacent books. Nothing new there. Personally, I’m tired of reading the same points about this and wonder how much good each new author’s reiteration is doing. Hedges again comes across as very self important, although doing work that is very important. Why does he rub me the wrong way so much?
Maybe some clarity comes from the second half, which is the best part of this. We get to see into the writing of the prisoners he teaches. The work here is heartbreaking and honest. I learned a lot more about prison relationships and familial expectations among the communities plagued by incarceration. You learn about systems of communication and respect. Hierarchies and economies in jail. There is one really interesting chapter about communicating through plunged toilet pipes to carry out romantic relationships with incarcerated women.
I wish Hedges had spent more time talking about how he taught these students to write rather than these stilted passages of call and response “discussions” about oppression, which I’m sure the students in jail were keenly aware of. Not many questions from students transcribed here. Lots of Hedges telling them about how the white man is keeping them down. Something was odd about it to me. It would have been a real gift to get a retelling of the editing process he used when working on a class play. Disagreements between students? Discomfort with subject matter? There is a lot more that could be explored.
Overall this was a good book, but it only achieves something great when Hedges allows someone else to be in the spotlight.
Maybe some clarity comes from the second half, which is the best part of this. We get to see into the writing of the prisoners he teaches. The work here is heartbreaking and honest. I learned a lot more about prison relationships and familial expectations among the communities plagued by incarceration. You learn about systems of communication and respect. Hierarchies and economies in jail. There is one really interesting chapter about communicating through plunged toilet pipes to carry out romantic relationships with incarcerated women.
I wish Hedges had spent more time talking about how he taught these students to write rather than these stilted passages of call and response “discussions” about oppression, which I’m sure the students in jail were keenly aware of. Not many questions from students transcribed here. Lots of Hedges telling them about how the white man is keeping them down. Something was odd about it to me. It would have been a real gift to get a retelling of the editing process he used when working on a class play. Disagreements between students? Discomfort with subject matter? There is a lot more that could be explored.
Overall this was a good book, but it only achieves something great when Hedges allows someone else to be in the spotlight.
janthonytucson's review
5.0
I received this book from my local, locally owned, bookstore as a bonus for spending so much on books, as the copy I received is a promotional copy.
Do we need another book that lays out the injustice of our carceral state, in which we go over pages and pages of data that show the rise of poverty that tracks the rise of the Chicago School of macroeconomic shock doctrine championed by Milton Friedman that dislocated labor productivity gains from wage growth and instead transferred those gains to the asset owning class through policy tools like the Phillips Curve, which created a permanent unemployable class of Americans that were, and still are, sacrificed to maintain a consistent YoY increase in asset prices whereby this degrading, spiritually crushing policy impels people to find any means necessary to survive, who are then caught in a system that criminalizes their rational behavior, and turns them into a permanent slave-labor class in the carceral state?
No we don't need more data, what we need is more humanizing of this state of things.
This book does that and I applaud Chris Hedges for being the instrument through which the humanization of these fellow subjugated citizens is transmitted.
I want to share two sections from the book that resonated with me. The first is from Chris the second from Dr. Cornel West.
"The role of art is transcendence, creating the capacity for empathy, especially for those who appear strange, foreign, or different. Art is not about entertainment, or at least not solely about entertainment. It goes deeper than that.
It's about dealing with what we call the nonrational forces in human life. These forces are not irrational. They are nonrational. They are absolutely essential to being whole as a human being. They are not quantifiable. They cannot be measured empirically. Yet they are real-maybe more real than those things we can see and touch and count. Grief, beauty, truth, justice, a life of meaning, the struggle with our own mortality, love. Sigmund Freud said he could write about sex, but he could never write about love.
These nonrational forces are honored by the artist. The origins of all religions are fused with art, poetry, music. This is because religion, like art, deals with transcendence, with empathy, with justice, with love- realities we experience viscerally but that are often beyond articulation. Religion, like art, allows us to hear” -Chris Hedges
"August Wilson said that Black people authorize an alternative reality from the nightmarish present reality by performance- performance in a communal context. There is a call and a response. This creates agency. It creates self-confidence and self-respect. You saw this in churches under slavery. You saw this in communal music and art under Jim and Jane Crow. Ma Rainey. Bessie Smith. Sarah Vaughan. Mary Lou Williams. Miles Davis. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. I decided long ago to stay on the love train Curtis Mayfield talked about when he sang 'People get ready,' the love train of the Isley Brothers, the love train of the O'Jays. Those are not just songs. They are existential declarations of a certain way of being in the world. I come from a people who've been Jim and Jane Crowed, enslaved and despised and devalued, who dished out to the world the love supreme of John Coltrane, dished out to the world the love and essays of a James Baldwin. How is it that these particular people, so hated, had the courage and the imagination to dish out love-figures like Martin King and Toni Morrison, and a whole host of others?” -Dr. Cornel West.
Do we need another book that lays out the injustice of our carceral state, in which we go over pages and pages of data that show the rise of poverty that tracks the rise of the Chicago School of macroeconomic shock doctrine championed by Milton Friedman that dislocated labor productivity gains from wage growth and instead transferred those gains to the asset owning class through policy tools like the Phillips Curve, which created a permanent unemployable class of Americans that were, and still are, sacrificed to maintain a consistent YoY increase in asset prices whereby this degrading, spiritually crushing policy impels people to find any means necessary to survive, who are then caught in a system that criminalizes their rational behavior, and turns them into a permanent slave-labor class in the carceral state?
No we don't need more data, what we need is more humanizing of this state of things.
This book does that and I applaud Chris Hedges for being the instrument through which the humanization of these fellow subjugated citizens is transmitted.
I want to share two sections from the book that resonated with me. The first is from Chris the second from Dr. Cornel West.
"The role of art is transcendence, creating the capacity for empathy, especially for those who appear strange, foreign, or different. Art is not about entertainment, or at least not solely about entertainment. It goes deeper than that.
It's about dealing with what we call the nonrational forces in human life. These forces are not irrational. They are nonrational. They are absolutely essential to being whole as a human being. They are not quantifiable. They cannot be measured empirically. Yet they are real-maybe more real than those things we can see and touch and count. Grief, beauty, truth, justice, a life of meaning, the struggle with our own mortality, love. Sigmund Freud said he could write about sex, but he could never write about love.
These nonrational forces are honored by the artist. The origins of all religions are fused with art, poetry, music. This is because religion, like art, deals with transcendence, with empathy, with justice, with love- realities we experience viscerally but that are often beyond articulation. Religion, like art, allows us to hear” -Chris Hedges
"August Wilson said that Black people authorize an alternative reality from the nightmarish present reality by performance- performance in a communal context. There is a call and a response. This creates agency. It creates self-confidence and self-respect. You saw this in churches under slavery. You saw this in communal music and art under Jim and Jane Crow. Ma Rainey. Bessie Smith. Sarah Vaughan. Mary Lou Williams. Miles Davis. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. I decided long ago to stay on the love train Curtis Mayfield talked about when he sang 'People get ready,' the love train of the Isley Brothers, the love train of the O'Jays. Those are not just songs. They are existential declarations of a certain way of being in the world. I come from a people who've been Jim and Jane Crowed, enslaved and despised and devalued, who dished out to the world the love supreme of John Coltrane, dished out to the world the love and essays of a James Baldwin. How is it that these particular people, so hated, had the courage and the imagination to dish out love-figures like Martin King and Toni Morrison, and a whole host of others?” -Dr. Cornel West.
stablebayesian's review
5.0
Go down, Moses,
way down in Egypt land,
tell old Pharao
to let my people go!
way down in Egypt land,
tell old Pharao
to let my people go!
cdhotwing's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
jgwc54e5's review
5.0
Chris Hedges has been teaching in prisons in New Jersey since 2013. This book is mostly about a drama class where he gets his students to write a play about their experience in the prison system. It’s not an easy book to read, the dehumanisation and degradations that these men suffer is appalling. Prison conditions, the individual stories of his various students, the plays they study and discuss, made this an emotional read for me (yes, I cried quite a few times). Hedges is always worth reading.
graciejames121's review against another edition
challenging
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Addiction, Death, Homophobia, Police brutality, Racism, Classism, Sexual assault, Grief, and Murder
anniehall's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
5.0
pivic's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0