Review of the Day: Solitary by Albert Woodfox

Recent Reading Solitary by Albert Woodfox

I have a snail mail book club with my friend, B. Solitary is our second book discussed through the postal service; the first was All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. Woodfox's book is a memoir of his long incarceration in Louisiana’s Angola prison, with most of his time spent in solitary confinement.

Here is one section B liked from the book:

By the time I was 40 I saw how I had transformed my cell, which was supposed to be a confined space of destruction and punishment into something positive. I used that space to educate myself, I used that space to build strong moral character, I used that space to develop principles and a code of conduct, I used that space for everything other than what my captors intended to be. In my forties, I saw how I’d developed a moral compass that was unbreakable, a strong sense of what was right or wrong, even when other people didn’t feel it. I saw it. I felt it. I tasted it. If something didn’t feel right, then no threat, no amount of pressure could make me do it. I knew that my life was the result of a conscious choice I made every minute of the day. A choice to make myself better. A choice to make things better for others. I made a choice not to break. I made a choice to change my environment (p. 206).

And here is one section I liked:

My proudest achievement in all my years in solitary was teaching a man how to read. His name was Charles. We called him Goldy because his mouth was full of gold teeth. He was a few cells down from me on D tier. I could tell he couldn’t read but was trying to hide it. I knew the signs because my mom did the same things to hide the fact she couldn’t read. One day I told him about my mom, about her accomplishments. I told him she couldn’t read or write and asked him if he could. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” I said. He told me he never learned to read because he didn’t go to school. “When I was coming up we didn’t have nothing,” he said. “We had to go and get it.” “If you want to learn,” I told him, “I can teach you, but it won’t work unless you really want to learn.” He told me he wanted to learn…. The first time I heard Goldy read a sentence out of a book I told him how proud I was of all he’d learned. He thanked me and I told him to thank himself. “Ninety-nine percent of your success was because you really wanted to read,” I said. Within a year he was reading at a high school level. The world was now open to him (pp. 202-3).

kindle and Audible audiobook. 433 pgs. First read 21 February 2020, re-read twice since then.

QOTD: Do you communicate with someone who is incarcerated?