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Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption
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Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption
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Overview
Angels with Dirty Faces is no romanticized tale of crime and punishment. The three lives in this creative nonfiction account are united by the presence of actual harmsometimes horrific violence. Imarisha, dealing with the complexities of her own experience with sexual assault and accountability, brings us behind prison walls to visit her adopted brother Kakamia and his fellow inmate Jimmy Mac” McElroy, a member of the brutal Irish gang the Westies. Together they explore the questions: People can do unimaginable damage to one anotherand then what? What do we as a society do? What might redemption look like?
Imarisha doesn’t flinch as she guides us through the difficulties and contradictions, eschewing theory for a much messier reality. The result is a nuanced and deeply personal analysis that allows readers to connect emotionally with the lives of people caught up within, and often destroyed by, our criminal justice system.
A highly personalized and intimate portrait by a courageous writer who goes beyond clichés and platitudes. This book is a bracing, clear-eyed exploration of one of the most important issues of our time: the growing incarceration rate in the US, and the consequences of this for citizens both inside and outside prison walls.” T.J. English, New York Times best-selling author of Where the Bodies Were Buried and The Westies
Walidah Imarisha gives us an unvarnished take on prison abolition. Beyond slogans or strategy, we are left with people, in all our imperfections and possibilities. This is a bold, beautiful, and absolutely necessary book, told with urgency and passion. Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation
Walidah Imarisha has written a brave book. It demonstrates both the universality and distinctiveness of three lives enmeshed through the US prison system. Imarisha pushes us to give up easy distinctions between innocence and guilt, good and evil, and to experience punishment and imprisonment as the messy, complex systems they are. And she reminds us that while there are no winners in this game, it is one replete with compassion, care, and resistance enough to permeate walls and cages.” Rachel Herzing, co-founder of Critical Resistance.
Angels with Dirty Faces is a superbly written shocking, sensuous, sometimes sadistic and even scandalous binding of biographies struggling with the question: What does redemption actually mean? It is impossible for one to engage this work and not emerge on the other side profoundly affected.” Sundiata Acoli, Political Prisoner
"Walidah Imarisha relates the experiences of crime, punishment, and victimization, not as abstractions, but as lived human tragedies. She shows us how they diminish and distortbut never definethe lives of those who suffer them. Writing with sorrow, and anger, and courageous hope, she forces us to reconsider what we mean by "justice," and by what endeavors its cause might be advanced, if never finally achieved. Kristian Williams, author Our Enemies in Blue
"I read Angels With Dirty Faces in one sitting, mesmerized by what Walidah Imarisha has accomplished. It is a daring dive into the real deal about why prisons don't work...written in such lyrical, fierce poetry it takes your breath away." Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, editor of The Revolution Starts at Home"
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781849351744 |
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Publisher: | AK PR INC |
Publication date: | 02/09/2016 |
Pages: | 320 |
Sales rank: | 295,853 |
Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Through the Gates 1
Kakamia 20
What I Didn't Know About My Brother 21
The Truth and Nothing But 29
What I Know About My Brother 43
Community Everywhere 63
Walidah 78
Imagining History 79
Gangsters and Martyrs 95
Bleeding Out in a Prison Visiting Room 117
Mac 140
Conception 141
The Gestation of Violence 163
Paper Flowers 197
Whacking Giuliani 217
Remembering Freedom 225
Bibliography 233