Here are 86 books that I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself fans have personally recommended if you like
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself.
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I’m endlessly fascinated by people’s resilience—how we hold onto life and find meaning in it when everything seems to be falling apart. As a queer and genderqueer author, I especially love to see stories about queer characters in all of their human messiness, characters who aren’t forced to be models of perfection in order to earn readers’ empathy, stories that show us queer people don’t deserve dignity because we’re perfect; we deserve it because we’re human. These five novels have affected me deeply because they don’t shy away from the complexities of grief, love, parenting, trauma, sex, social justice, gender identity, and more.
Against the backdrop of a speculative future in which extra shadows have become the alternative to prison and cameras watch our every move,I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myselftakes a raw, honest look at grief, family, queerness, and how we survive.
Kris has lost her wife Beau and gained an extra shadow—along with a child who also has an extra shadow. As she navigates her new reality, Kris can either sink deeper into her grief, accepting a life of surveillance and oppression for herself and her kid, or she can choose love and hope.
Crane’s approach to storytelling, open and vulnerable and using small fragments and pop quizzes, allowed me deep into Kris’s heart, and I rooted for her as she forged a life against all odds.
Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state
In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime—and a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections.
I’m the author of two published novels and dozens of short stories, essays, and memoirs. I write about education, crime, and public safety, and I work to improve educational and career opportunities for young people in New York and other cities.
Is our criminal justice system too harsh or too lenient on crime? To answer this question, Barry Latzer, retired professor at John Jay, offers both facts and historical perspective in his history of punishment since colonial days. Latzer does not gloss over the historic racism and cruelty of policing in the U.S. but shows that today most people in prison are actually there for committing violent crimes, and that the new technology of “e-carceration” can further reduce prison populations while improving public safety.
Justice is on trial in the United States. From police to prisons, the justice system is accused of overpunishing. It is said that too many Americans are abused by the police, arrested, jailed, and imprisoned. But the denunciations are overblown. The data indicates, contrary to the critics, that we don’t imprison too many, nor do we overpunish. This becomes evident when we examine the crimes of prisoners and the actual time served. The history of punishment in the United States, discussed in vivid detail, reveals that the treatment of offenders has become progressively more lenient. Corporal punishment is no more.…
Throughout my academic career, my chief scholarly interest has been to assess public policy using coherent theory and rigorous empirical method.The economics of crime and justice offers a powerful framework for achieving these ends.
Cohen offers a comprehensive sweep of the financial and non-financial consequences of criminal behavior, crime prevention, and society’s response to crime, public and private.
Crime costs are far-reaching, including medical costs, lost wages, property damage, pain and suffering, and reduced quality of life for victims and the public at large, as well as public expenditures on police, courts, and prisons, and the costs borne by offenders and their families, who often suffer consequences apart from the punishments they receive for committing crime.
This book presents a comprehensive view of the financial and non-financial consequences of criminal behavior, crime prevention, and society's response to crime. Crime costs are far-reaching, including medical costs, lost wages, property damage and pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life for victims and the public at large; police, courts, and prisons; and offenders and their families who may suffer consequences incidental to any punishment they receive for committing crime.
The book provides a comprehensive economic framework and overview of the empirical methodologies used to estimate costs of crime. It provides an assessment of what is known and where the…
Now, I’m a journalist who covers prisons—but a decade ago I was in prison myself. I’d landed there on a heroin charge after years of struggling with addiction as I bumbled my way through college. Behind bars, I read voraciously, almost as if making up for all the assignments I’d left half-done during my drug years. As I slowly learned to rebuild and reinvent myself, I also learned about recovery and hope, and the reality of our nation’s carceral system really is. Hopefully, these books might help you learn those things, too.
One thing prisons purposely do not do is teach you anything about the history of prisons. If you want to do that, you’ll have to do it on your own—and Oshinsky is such a great start. His 1996 book details the roots of Parchman prison in Mississippi and draws a line from slavery to convict leasing to modern-day penal farms.
In this sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity, Worse Than Slavery is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the Civil Rights Era—and beyond.
Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi’s infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was…
Stories of people impacted by the criminal justice system have been key to my understanding of the system and my efforts to reform it. I knew I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer when, in law school, I represented a woman who was raped by a corrections officer in a federal prison in Connecticut. My experiences suing the police and corrections officers as a young lawyer in New York inspired 15+ years researching the realities of civil rights litigation and barriers to achieve justice. I believe that the best way to understand the realities of the criminal justice system is through the experiences of people trying to make their way through it.
Charged reveals criminal prosecutors’ massive power and discretion.
And Emily Bazelon makes the stakes and consequences of this massive power and discretion come alive by telling the stories of two people charged with two different crimes by two different prosecutors.
By tracking every step of each case—from arrest to charging to trial to sentencing—she shows the harms the overzealous prosecutors can impose, as well as the mercy prosecutors can show. And she traces the work of progressive prosecutors across the country, offering an alternative path forward.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out.
“An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that speaks directly to how we reduce mass incarceration.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
“This harrowing, often enraging book is a hopeful one, as well, profiling innovative new approaches and the frontline advocates who champion them.”—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE •…
I’ve always been drawn to stories about wrongful convictions. I can think of nothing worse than losing your freedom for something you did not do. More importantly, I think it’s important to hold those responsible accountable. I believe in the sentiment that it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to have one innocent man convicted.
This book deals with the death penalty. The author covers several cases involving people who were on death row and were subsequently found to be innocent.
The book also covers related topics, such as mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing, racial bias, prison overcrowding, cruel and unusual sentences for minors, the psychological impact of long-term solitary confinement, and a host of other crime and punishment issues.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN, JAMIE FOXX, AND BRIE LARSON.
A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, ESQUIRE, AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR.
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this is a powerful, true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix America's broken justice system, as seen in the HBO documentary True Justice.
The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. One in every 15 people born there today is expected to go
to prison. For black men this figure rises to one…
I’ve always been drawn to stories about wrongful convictions. I can think of nothing worse than losing your freedom for something you did not do. More importantly, I think it’s important to hold those responsible accountable. I believe in the sentiment that it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to have one innocent man convicted.
You may remember the hysteria that formed in the US in the early eighties involving childcare workers and child molestation charges. This story occurred in the early nineties, well after those earlier cases, but contains many of the same elements that led to countless false convictions in those earlier child molestation trials.
It begins in 1993 with an accusation of child molestation by a black man named Joeseph Allen. The accusation by the child’s mother also included a claim against a bus driver, Nancy Smith, who was accused of driving the four-year-old child to the home where the molestation took place.
From this first accusation and the initial investigation, Author David Miraldi follows this tragic story for the next three decades. When you think things can’t get any worse for Joseph Allen and Nancy Smith, they do. Then, to top it off, there is an ending that you won’t see…
In the tight-knit community of Lorain, Ohio, a whirlwind of horror swept through as unsettling allegations surfaced - a trusted bus driver and her alleged companion accused of shattering the innocence of preschoolers in the respected Head Start program. The verdict? Life-long prison sentences that would cast a shadow over a community, and initiate an untiring quest for truth.
'The Edge of Doubt' is a meticulously researched true crime narrative that delves into the reverberations of a sensational trial. This gripping tale is anchored in three decades of unwavering claims of innocence. As the pages turn, you'll find yourself torn…
I’ve always loved books and reading, so it’s no surprise I’m an author and blogger. However, feeling strongly about justice and truth, I’ve also been active in the feminist and anti-racist movements. Additionally, I founded The Asian Women Writers Workshop (later known as the Asian Women Writers Collective), whose work has been archived by South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive (SADAA). I’ve been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at several British universities and am a member of PEN International. As a writer of colour (South-Asian heritage), I'm intrigued by the work of diverse writers, their interpretation and focus.
We’ve all seen those movies about courtroom battles and a determined prosecutor, speaking up for innocent victims. In Nazir Afzal we have the real deal. Coming from a working-class, migrant family, he knows what it’s like for the powerless. As Chief Prosecutor he won milestone cases involving criminals, honour killings, domestic violence, human trafficking, and many others. This engrossing book takes us behind the scenes. Nazir Afzal is recognised as a man who changed British justice for the better.
Nazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court, and that their perpetrators were convicted. From the Rochdale sex ring to the earliest prosecutions for honour killing and modern slavery, Nazir was at the forefront of the British legal system for decades.
But his story begins in Birmingham, in the sixties, as a young boy facing racist violence and the tragic death of a young family member - and it's this…
I am intrigued by the diversity of human responses to suffering. As a social scientist, I've had the great fortune to carry out research in Israel, Okinawa (Japan), and the US. People in each of these countries have experienced horrific events, and they deal with the suffering they’ve endured in very different ways. In Israel and Okinawa, people seem to understand that suffering is a natural part of life and come together to deal with the aftermath of tragedy. In the US, in contrast, we tend to treat tragedy as an individual trauma that leads to emotional pathology, and our responses tend to be limited to therapy, medicine, and drugs.
I cannot get Shayne’s story out of my mind! It tells the stories of six very different individuals from diverse backgrounds with various access to health care and other resources. All six struggle with mental illness. And all six end up incarcerated and, finally, dead. But it’s Shayne’s story that I (and my students) can’t stop thinking about.
Shayne was a bright and beautiful child who grew up in a close and loving family. By the time she was eleven, Shayne had begun to make inappropriate comments, sneak out of her house at night, and lose interest in school. At age fourteen, she was found in a park with a young man and some beer. She refused to tell her therapist what she had been doing there but mentioned that she felt people could read her mind. A physician who met her just the one time diagnosed her as psychotic…
Crazy in America shows how people suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and other serious psychological illnesses are regularly incarcerated because alternative care is not available. Once behind bars, they are frequently punished again for behaviour that is psychotic, not criminal. A compelling and important examination of a shocking human rights abuse in our midst, Crazy in America is an indictment of a society that incarcerates its weakest and most vulnerable citizens , causing them to emerge sicker and more damaged.
I am an award-winning author who has written books for all ages and genres – a Young Adult historical novel, several works of non-fiction for middle school students, two picture books for children, an adult work of non-fiction, and an adult memoir. I love a great story, and, for each book, I target the audience I believe is best suited to my narrative. Several of my books were inspired by my mother’s story of childhood immigration as she fled Nazi Germany for America and the emotional legacy of that experience.
A gripping collage of moving stories of the poor, the wrongly convicted, and the marginalized, and Bryan Stevenson’s efforts to fight for their freedom. In this compelling Young Adult edition, Stevenson engages readers with his riveting storytelling. The author, who won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, makes complicated legal issues understandable for young people. I picked this book because I believe every student should read it to understand the American judicial system. Many will find Bryan Stevenson so inspiring that they want to follow in Stevenson’s footsteps.
The young adult adaptation of the acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy--now a major motion picture starring Michael B. Jordan, Jaime Foxx, and Brie Larson and the subject of an HBO documentary feature!
In this very personal work--adapted from the original #1 bestseller, which the New York Times calls "as compelling as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so"--acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom.
Stevenson's story is one of working to protect basic human rights…
