Correctional and Fall 2020 Update

​News about Correctional (forthcoming 2021) 

Dear friends - as the leaves crimson in the dread of election season, I wanted to share some news with you. First, thank you for your regard and care over the years. As you might know, I went through an excruciating personal moment nearly a decade ago which resulted in the loss of my job, home, marriage and community.  I have since been unraveling those decisions, examining myself and the America I have grown up in – healing personal wounds that have lingered in the margins of my work, unnamed, for far too long. In the process, I was fortunate enough to win an international research fellowship at the University of Sydney which allowed me time and space to complete work on a doctorate, which consists of a critical history of the racialization of American prisons and a portion of my memoir. Through the lens of a sudden and unexpected incarceration, I dig deeply into my ancestry and bicultural identity,  a duality that delivered me unto a cell at the height of my academic career. Beginning with the story of my parents’ intercontinental journey as first-generation immigrants from South India to Washington DC to spending a year in Chennai during my childhood, the story encompasses my days at Columbia and in the publishing industry pre- and post - 9/11, arriving at the moment where I am told to leave behind my keys and shoelaces to enter the cinderblock hell of the Hartford Correctional Center. There I saw firsthand the dark secret our country would rather have us ignore and the men I met there, mainly brown and black, begged me to tell their stories. 

I’m so pleased to tell you that "Correctional" is now under advance contract with University of Wisconsin Press and due out in 2021. I humbly think it’s the most important work I’ve ever done - and I know it’s been the most difficult. Given the occasion, I thought I might provide you with some periodic news of what I am up to and keep you updated of the progress of the book (if you’d rather not be interrupted, please don’t hesitate to say so). Even in the face of the discord in our democracy, there is so much good work happening around the world, and I’m glad to share some of that with you.
 
Stay safe and inspired. 

​The first excerpt from the book appears in the current issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, as part of a folio edited by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Another excerpt about spending a year of my childhood in South India will be forthcoming in The Common. 

Alone with myself, in a place I never dreamed I would be, I realize that I am not the perfect son. Not an unfailing husband. Not a role model professor. Not the most fully realized father, much as I endeavor. I’m not my name, or my family history, or my social class. I’m not just an anarchist poet who somehow ended up in jail, but rather, I’m a being who irreducibly, at base, is simply a pulse of pure potential and cosmic energy, entering and leaving my body. I am the lives I am touching briefly, that have accepted me and I them as roommates for a spell. I am not judged by them and thereby can suspend my own judgment of myself, halt the recitation of missteps that unreels obsessively in my head. On my bunk with these men for this brief instant in time, playing chess, cards and basketball, sharing stories along with our interpretation of certain statutes and photos of our family, I find myself no more or less human than anyone around me. At last, I can simply breathe.   
                       -excerpt from Correctional 

​The Harvest Kitchen Project is a 20-week culinary and job-readiness training program for youth within the Division of Juvenile Corrections in Rhode Island. My recent writing workshop there focused on the transformative powers of writing and is part of my ongoing journey to provide greater accessibility and arts whereever needed. 

​I am continuing this personal work outside of my writing, with men and women impacted by the criminal justice system. I am excited - and a little sheepish - to announce my theatrical debut at the And Still We Rise World Premiere. We are rising from the places shunned and shamed; and we have something to say. 
Read more about the mission here.

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FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA. 
Check out Correctional's social accounts for updates and a resource tool to learn more about the state of incarceration on BIPOC as we all dive deeper into our roles as both creatives and humans striving for equity.
I urge you to please read along and join me on this complex, timely journey of navigating the criminal justice system and understanding its implications for us all. #Vote2020 #Staysafe #blacklivesmatter #humanrights