Judith Gwinn Adrian

This was a difficult book for me. It was not difficult reading, but it did bring up a lot of reactions.
Basically, Adrian was corresponding with a prisoner to try to get a sense of why her deceased father behaved as he did. To me, that sounds like an excuse for corresponding with that particular person since his life was extremely different from her father's. But the letters presented are a valuable presentation of lower class Black American male experiences, and a reflection on the failure of the American "criminal justice" system.
In response to questions by Adrian, Morris primarily writes of his experiences of his first 17 years, the importance of family, The values they taught him (which allows us to see where they differ from those of middle class white families), the abuse he received, and how that all translated into his actions. He was deaf (and that may have been caused by some of the abuse) which led to misunderstandings. He lived in a gang environment which required never showing weakness. DarRen also writes of how he has been working on his inner growth in the more than 17 years of his imprisonment, and of some of his prison experiences.… (més)