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Dead Weight chronicles the improbable turnaround of a drug smuggler
who, after being sentenced to eight years in state prison, returned
to society to earn a PhD in creative writing and become the only
tenured professor in the United States with seven felony
convictions. Horton's visceral essays highlight the difficulties of
trying to change one's life for the better, how the weight of
felony convictions never dissipates. The memoir begins with a
conversation between Horton and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
statue in New York City. Their imagined dialogue examines the
psychological impact of racism on Black men and boys, including
Horton's separation from his mother, immediately after his birth,
in a segregated Alabama hospital. From his current life as a
professor and prison reformer, Horton looks back on his experiences
as a drug smuggler and trafficker during the 1980s-1990s as well as
the many obstacles he faced after his release. He also examines the
lasting impact of his drug activity on those around him, reflecting
on the allure of economic freedom and the mental escapism that
cocaine provided, an allure so strong that both sellers and users
were willing to risk prison. Horton shares historical context and
vivid details about people caught in the war on drugs who became
unsuspecting protagonists in somebody else's melodrama. Lyrical and
gripping, Dead Weight reveals the lifelong effects of one man's
incarceration on his psyche, his memories, and his daily experience
of American society.
"Forgive state poet #289-128 / for not scribbling illusions / of
trickery as if timeless hell / could be captured by stanzas /
alliteration or slant rhyme," remarks the speaker, Maryland
Department of Corrections prisoner {#289-128}, early in this
haunting collection. Three sections -- {#289-128} Property of the
State, {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23), and {#289-128} Poet
in New York -- frame the countless ways in which the narrator's
body and life are socially and legally rendered by the state even
as the act of poetry helps him reclaim an identity during
imprisonment. These poems address the prison industrial complex,
the carceral state, the criminal justice system, racism, violence,
love, resilience, hope, and despair while exploring the idea of
freedom in a cell. In the tradition of Dennis Brutus's Letters to
Martha, Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt, and Etheridge
Knight's The Essential Etheridge Knight, {#289-128} challenges the
language of incarceration -- especially the ways in which it
reinforces stigmas and stereotypes. Though {#289-128} refuses to be
defined as a felon, this collection viscerally details the
dehumanizing effects of prison, which linger long after release. It
also illuminates the ways in which we all are relegated to cells or
boundaries, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
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This is Where (Paperback)
Louise Waakaa'igan; Edited by Randall Horton
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R342
R280
Discovery Miles 2 800
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The Pink Box (Paperback)
Yesenia Montilla; Edited by Randall Horton
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R424
R351
Discovery Miles 3 510
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Blood Orange (Paperback)
Angela Narciso Torres; Edited by Randall Horton
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R416
R341
Discovery Miles 3 410
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Final Words (Hardcover)
578 Men and Women Executed on Texas Death Row, Randall Horton
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R1,316
R1,057
Discovery Miles 10 570
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In 1976 the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the
legality of capital punishment in their ruling on Gregg v. Georgia.
In the 46 years since the decision was handed down, 1,551 convicted
prisoners have been executed. The United States is the only Western
nation - and one of four advanced democracies - that regularly
applies the death penalty. While the death penalty is legal in 27
states, only 21 have the means to carry out death sentences. Of
those states, Texas has executed the most prisoners in recent
history, condemning 578 people to death since the 1976 ruling,
beginning with the death of Charlie Brooks in 1982. Texas retains
the third-largest death row population behind California and
Florida. In the summer of 2020, the Trump administration broke a
nearly 17-year stay during which the federal government did not
sanction any executions when it put 13 inmates to death over six
months. Seventeen of the 45 current federal death row inmates, the
highest proportion of any state, are currently incarcerated in
Texas. Final Words is a project that addresses the death penalty in
the United States as a violation of human rights. Consisting of a
collection of government documents relating to the 578 executed
Texas inmates, each set of pages reveals a portrait of a life
bookended by violence in which final moments are often spent
expressing words of love for family and friends, sorrow for
victims, and gratitude for life lived. The compilation stands as a
stark indictment of a system built by institutions rampant with
racism, classism, and sexism. Each entry, each story, each
utterance will challenge readers to answer the question: is there
room for humanity in the American justice complex?
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