Solitary

This is Albert Woodfox’s shocking and amazing life history of spending most of his life in Angola, the most brutal prison in Louisiana.

It’s an exposé of prison brutality and dehumanization. But it’s also a stunning account of his own courage and spirit. On top, the writing is sparse, stark, and beautiful. 

This book upended everything I thought I knew about the criminal justice and the penal system in the United States and shook me to the core. Albert Woodfox provides a raw, honest, and compelling narrative of his life which is centered largely upon the 44 years he spent in solitary confinement for crimes he did not commit. His strength is palpable which he attributes to friends who witnessed and shared his unwarranted punishment and others who fought for his freedom. Equally important is the context Woodfox provides that documents profound racial disparities in the criminal justice system throughout the country.… show more.

Any understanding of mass incarceration must be grounded in the experience of people who have been incarcerated. Alfred Woodfox’s autobiography of spending more than four decades in prison, the bulk of it in solitary confinement, is both a rich political analysis by a revolutionary who emerged from the Black Panther Party and a deeply troubling account of the tortured existence of hundreds of thousands of people locked away in US prisons for acts that they either did not carry out or for which ridiculously punitive laws and policies in addressing apparent harms done have been applied. No book about prison… show more.