Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an Amer Prison by Shaka Senghor

"Writing" My Wrongs, Shaka Senghor's auto-biography has resounding messages and disturbing accounts of life in prison and on the streets of Detroit as a drug, dealing thug.  I'm going to take a hardline with aspects of Senghor's soul bearing account of his Hellish ordeal & road to redemption.  Senghor was sentenced to 40 yrs in prison for the 2nd degree murder resulting from a drug deal turned deadly.  Senghor bears his gut wrenching life dealing crack & becoming a drug addict as a juvenile.  This candid account is a severe wakeup call for making poor choices and for holding oneself accountable.  What compelled me to continue reading Senghor's life depicting the underbelly of  Dante's Inferno?  Senghor discovered a penchant for writing that proved a turning point. His writing has a clear, inescapable prose.  However, I agree with his 1st parole officer who seemed predetermined to keep him behind bars and did not credit his writings with absolving him of the murder & the severe beating of a prison guard.  I dislike the wordplay "Writing" my wrongs.  It discredits the seriousness of  his heinous & fatal actions.  On the other hand, our nation must reaccess & rectify our inhumane incarceration practices.  Solitary confinement is torture & must be rectified.  Senghor is correct "isolation causes a disconnect in the deepest part of the human psyche."  I do not agree with the death penalty, life without the possiblity of parole or solitary confinement.  "We can never know the power that a word of indness or an act of forgiveness will have on the person who needs it most."  (SS)