American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Review:

Shane Bauer wanted to learn more about the experiences of prisoners in the United States, but he knew that as a journalist, he would face many barriers to getting the real story from people currently in prison. As such, he decided to go undercover at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana as a prison guard. American Prison is part memoir of Bauer’s time as a guard, and part chronicle of the history of U.S. prisons. He does a great job of balancing out his experiences while also sharing the larger context of how we’ve done imprisonment in America throughout our country’s history.

Maybe y’all already knew that for-profit prisons are a thing, but I straight up had no idea that this was a concept until I read this book. I have heard many arguments for privatizing major sectors of governmental service, and this book explores the positive and negative implications of privatization of prison services. Absolutely fascinating, and worth the read.

Favorite Passage:

The United States imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world. In 2017 we had 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last forty years. We now have almost 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of its prisoners.

What I Loved Most:

Bauer has a unique perspective on prison. As a journalist, he was actually captured and put in prison in Iran for more than two years. It’s fascinating to listen to him reflect on his own experience as a prisoner, and reconcile it with his role of prison guard in America. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology, and I loved hearing his clear cognitive dissonance about the experience – he understood what it was like to have your freedoms stripped from you, but still engaged in regulatory behavior while rationalizing it away. Even though Bauer doesn’t directly point it out, there’s lots of fun psychology and sociology theory and application in this book.

Read this book if you like:

Prison, sociology, undercover exposés, memoirs, history

Book Details:

Color Me In

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Review:

At the beginning of Color Me In, Neveah Levitz is just beginning to understand what life is like with separated parents. She and her mom recently moved to her mom’s family home in Harlem, which seems leagues away from the affluent neighborhood she grew up in. Between taking the subway to her private school back near her old house and learning how to navigate the intricacies of her new neighborhood, Neveah has to figure out how to adjust to her new reality.

Neveah’s mom is African American and Baptist (Christian), and her dad is ethnically and somewhat-religiously Jewish. She has never worked out where exactly that puts her, or how to fit in with either side of her heritage. Her school is mostly white, and she knows she doesn’t fully belong there. However, upon moving in with her darker-skinned relatives, she begins to see the challenges most African American people are confronted with daily – the ones she has avoided as she usually passes as white. To further complicate things, her dad decides she should embrace her Jewish side by having a belated bat mitzvah rather than a sweet sixteen birthday party. This story chronicles Neveah’s struggles to figure out who she really is.

Color Me In is a wonderful story of identity and coming of age and trying to decide who you want to be. Diaz wrote this book semi-autobiographically – she is a multiracial woman who grew up navigating the complexities that come along with having a multicultural identity. As such, the realness and genuineness of this story shine through every word. This would be a great read for high schoolers as they are navigating their own identities, but I also loved it as a twenty-six year old woman. I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of Color Me In from the publisher, Delacorte Press. This book will be published in August 2019 – make sure to keep your eyes out for it!

**Trigger warning for sexual assault.**

Favorite Passage:

The rage I’ve felt for so long bubbles over, and the avalanche of emotion is almost impossible to withstand. I want her to know that her words don’t disappear when they leave her lips; they create tiny invisible lacerations, reminders that the sum of my parts will never be sufficient. I want to stop being expected to give people the benefit of the doubt as I take a seat at the table I would never have been invited to if I were three shades closer to my mom. I want to stop feeling like an imposter in my own skin, undeserving of my rich blended heritage.
–Chapter 36

What I Loved Most:

I have never read a book written from a perspective of someone who seems to have white privilege while being a person of color. Colorism in our American society allows people who look “more white” to escape much of the discrimination that their darker-skinned peers do. Neveah’s cousin Jordan, who is dark skinned, challenges Neveah to identify the way that her lighter skin affords her privileges that Jordan will never get. In this book, we see Neveah learn that by remaining silent when she sees racism, she is complicit in the continuing oppression of people of color.

Read this book if you like:

Coming of age stories, poetry, searching for identity, multicultural families, calling out white privilege

Book Details:

  • Author: Natasha Diaz
  • Publisher: Delacorte Press
  • Date of Publication: August 20, 2019
  • Age Recommendation: High School
  • Pre-order Color Me In from Amazon if you’d like to own a copy!

Seafire

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Review:

In the nautical world of Seafire, Caledonia Styx has a mission to bring down the oppressive regime run by war-lord Aric Athair. A ship under the authority of Athair was responsible for the murder of her family when she was a pre-teen. Since then, she has become a captain of her own ship (Ghost), supervising a crew of fifty-two females who have also suffered at the hands of Aric’s men. Her crew aims to take down ships in Athair’s Bullet fleet.

Caledonia’s best friend, Pisces, is her second-in-command. When Pisces is captured by a Bullet crew, Caledonia fears the worst. However, Pisces escapes with the help of a rogue Bullet. Caledonia has always had a strict no-male rule on her ship, but her rules are challenged when the Bullet tells them he has important information that might help them take down Athair.

This book caught my eye when I was browsing in my library. The cover art is absolutely stunning, and the story drew me in from the first page. Parker has created a cast of characters that are complex and multidimensional. She gives them rich backstories, and I found myself wanting a book written on each one of the five women in Caledonia’s command crew. Thankfully, this is the start of a trilogy, so we’ll get to follow the story of the women of the Ghost! I highly recommend you add this to your to-read list.

Favorite Passage:

“On the back of the sea, who do we trust?” she called.
Her crew answered together, “Our sisters.”
Caledonia raised her voice a little more. “When our ship falters, who do we trust?”
“Our sisters.”
She shouted, “In a storm of Bullets, who do we trust?”
Their voices spiraled together, rising up like the early morning sun. “Our sisters!”
With a grin, she finished the call. “We fight together.”
And they responded, “Or not at all!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven

What I Loved Most:

The crew on the Ghost are a diverse crew, including a character (Hime) who uses sign language to communicate. Her signing is normalized in the book; the other members of the crew also sign when they talk with her. Hime is a complex character – we get to hear about her backstory, which includes trauma and addiction, in addition to her romantic relationship with another crew member being a low-key side story. I loved how Parker didn’t make it a big deal that Hime doesn’t speak verbally – it was a part of who she was, but not her whole identity.

Read this book if you like:

Strong female protagonists, diverse characters, adventure

Book Details:

  • Author: Natalie C. Parker
  • Publisher: Razorbill
  • Date of Publication: August 28, 2018
  • Age Recommendation: High School
  • Find Seafire on Amazon if you’d like to own a copy!
  • Find Seafire on WorldCat to see what libraries around you have this title available!