Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison
By Shaka Senghor: Convergent Books (a Penguin Random House division), 2016
Reviewed by Pam Gates
This is a painful book to read. It makes one feel the struggles and despair of someone locked away in prison. But – read the whole book. Things didn’t look too good for Shaka Senghor, born Jay White, during his teens or for much of the time he was in prison. But Shaka Senghor did at last find himself; his trek from despair and rage to hope, forgiveness, and strong, positive participation in society makes a gripping story.
Shaka Senghor was imprisoned at age 19 for murder. He spent the next 19 years in various Michigan prisons, struggling for years with a ferocious anger. He endured a total of seven years in solitary; participated in prison gangs, often as a leader; and generally conducted himself as a lost soul, disrespected and disrespecting. His surroundings were grim, clearly meant to accomplish nothing more than removal from society, punishment, and deep, deep shaming. There was no rehabilitation, just a continuation of the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the crack-addled streets, whose anger and danger followed the men behind the prison walls and preoccupied them most of the time they were there.
It started when Jay was 11, with his parents’ divorce. Before that, he’d been raised middle-class, with a mom, a dad, and three sisters, and he remembered a reasonably happy home. He dreamed of becoming a doctor. But by the time he was 14, he’d been seriously rejected by his mother, who beat him for minor infractions and often said she wished he’d never been born. She finally decided he had to go live with his father, and that appears to have been the last interaction between mother and son.
By 14, Jay was earning plenty as a crack dealer, watching respected members of his community crawling on the floor in the crack house he sold at. He spent big on clothes and drink and began carrying a gun for protection after he was shot at by a rival drug dealer.
Jay’s father and stepmother provided a loving home, but the pain of his mother’s rejection was too much; he came close to blowing his brains out with a shotgun at age 15. It was the open love of his father, plus Jay’s own concern for his 2-year-old nephew and the child’s mom, his stepsister, that kept him from completing the act.
The story moves from the streets to jail to the streets, and from prison to prison, though not always in chronological order. Each chapter is titled by a correctional facility or an address somewhere in Detroit, and the month and year that the chapter took place. Gradually, Senghor worries more and more about his son, and that he can’t be with him. He worries that he’s not a brother to his sisters, nor an uncle to his nephew. His situation looks hopeless, and he often acts out in the prison atmosphere of anger, disrespect, and rejection. But his father never gives up on him, visiting when he can, sometimes with other family members, and maintaining connection via letters as well.
Jay eventually finds a group that offers self-help and mutual respect among the prisoners, particularly the members of the group. While allied with this group, he changes his name. He notes his gift for leadership and decides to use it for positive ends. During his last stretch in “the hole” he starts reading spiritual books, really thinking about things, and journaling his thoughts, realizing that the hurt he’s been carrying from his mother’s rejection is the base for so much of his behavior. The act of writing about this and about the insanity he sees around him in “the hole” takes away their power. His letters to his family become more meaningful and life-changing, and he even starts writing novels!
Eventually he meets a woman who facilitates HOPE (Helping Our Prisoners Elevate), a group he’s attending in prison, and they develop a powerful bond. She stays by him when he is transferred upstate (again!), making it almost impossible for her (or anyone else) to visit him. She stays by him when his parole, which felt so certain, is again denied.
Shaka Senghor makes no excuses for himself. He acknowledges the cruelty and wrong of the murder he committed, how it tore apart families, his own included. But his determination and abilities, the love of his son, the loyalty and love of his father, and the dedication of a strong woman pull him through. When he is finally released, he takes on leadership roles, lecturing widely on criminal-legal system reform, an inspiration to thousands, as the book cover proclaims. Certainly this book, though at times painful, is also an inspiration, showing us the power of the human spirit, even under extreme circumstances.