A newly founded effort to say ‘yes’ more often recently ended up with me joining a casual soccer league with some of my work friends and friends-of-friends. After a blowout loss on a rainy Sunday morning, our team ended up at a nearby apartment cooking pancakes. A conversation that ranged from music tastes, New York apartment conditions, and post-game reflections eventually ended up on the topic of reading. After showing us the impressive stack of books she read this year, my friend Ella suggested that we each take one for ourselves. I found myself debating between a book that has been on my perpetually growing reading list and another I had never seen before but described by Ella as “being about solitary confinement”. My curiosity ended up getting the better of me, and that’s how I ended up with Shaka Senghor’s Writing My Wrongs.
I knew nothing about this book beyond the brief words composing Ella’s description, so I was mentally prepared for anything as I began reading this book on the hour-long subway ride to the airport. As I became increasingly hooked by each successive chapter of this book, I found that cramped ride feeling shorter than my normal 15-minute ride to work. Although I am usually critical of non-fiction books for being slow burners, Writing My Wrongs was an exception from the get-go.
Whereas most non-fiction books follow a linear timeline, Senghor chose to alternate chapters between prison life and his childhood that led up to his arrest (the stories themselves were told linearly). Senghor talked about his broken childhood and how years of neglect pushed him out of the house as a young teenager. A state of desperation and a need for both money and shelter resulted in Senghor turning to the streets to make money in the seemingly quickest way: dealing.
Much of that narrative discussed Senghor’s experiences both using and dealing opioids. Although Ella described the book as a narrative about solitary confinement, I found the other timeline about Senghor’s street experiences more engaging, and part of that may be the consequence of an interaction I had earlier this year. In January, I was reading Beth Macy’s Dopesick, a different book overviewing the national opioid epidemic. While reading that book in a coffee shop, I was approached by someone who correctly guessed the nature of the book from the glaringly large font on the cover. Before I could begin offering my opinions of the book, the man rolled up his sleeve, revealing a forearm covered in bruises from needle usage. I quickly put the book down and we ended up in an hour-long conversation about the intricacies of the epidemic and the lack of government action to prevent it. Although I finished the book that week, I felt as though I learned more from that hour-long conversation than anything mentioned in those 400 pages. When Senghor began discussing his involvement with crack, my memories from that chance encounter came to mind and significantly altered my perspective on the following chapters. For that reason, I felt as if I learned more from his childhood stories than from his experiences being imprisoned.
The first narrative described scenario after scenario of Senghor being neglected as a child which, in my eyes, paralleled the mistake after mistake he made in prison. It was hard to form an opinion about Senghor: needlessly murdering a man who wasn’t threatening him, almost beating a police officer to death, and countless outlashes of violence in prison were all problematic. It was clear that Senghor was set in his ways until the latter portion of his prison sentence, at which point, his remorse became more apparent.
If you purchase this book, in many respects you are walking away with two novels. One is about the dehumanizing prison experience that is riddled with internal corruption and flaws while another is about the harsh realities of street life in less affluent areas that normalizes and pushes individuals towards criminal actions.
Ella, it’s highly unlikely that I would have come across this book without your recommendation, so thank you for such an eye-opening read. I don’t normally find the time to finish books in one or two sittings anymore, but this was so engaging from the start that I found myself carving out the time to get this done within a weekend. I’m looking forward to swapping this out for another book you found equally as valuable.
Rating: 5/5