On Translating Hervé Guibert
Le mausolée des amants makes every essential demand upon me; the sensual exigencies, and cruel untempered forms of address in this epistolary work...mark the rest of us as gilt… More
Judgment Walk
My adolescent years are the most vivid of my memories. Maybe because they were the most intense and shaky of my life experiences. Back then nothing seemed normal.… More
How to Survive in Prison
Find out your boyfriend got married. Spend as much time in the yard as possible. Learn to fit in. Become someone’s girlfriend. Stop thinking about the outside world. Join… More
Walk Like a Man
Who’s Your Daddy? My birth mother’s name was Lula Mae. After her death my two sisters, three brothers, and I were taken in by various relatives. Melvin, the… More
A Fine, Fine Day
I It was too late for the Avenue so I headed downtown to the corner of Jones and Eddy. There, the sidewalk is stain’d with the lives of the… More
The Years In Between
The tall gray wall encircles fifty-five acres of land. Spired towers with narrow steel doors, loophole windows, and floodlights straddle the wall, like spines on a fearsome dragon. Rolling… More
To Eat or Not to Eat, That Is the Question
An Examination of the Food Culture at One Modern American Detention Center Fictional and nonfictional accounts[1] of prison[2] life all point out the centrality of food in a prisoner’s life.… More
A Chair Full of Ashes
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest. —Emerson When I was six, my father inherited some money. With it, he bought some property and built… More
Left Behind
“Everybody lock up!” The guard barked over the intercom. “Get in your cells, now!” “Oh God, what now?” one of the girls asked, picking up her plastic bowl and gathering… More
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