Usually when someone is incarcerated, it means that they will be separated from friends, family, and support systems for an extended period. The lack of contact and support from loved ones for an incarcerated person can make the experience of incarceration much more traumatic than it already is. Lack of contact from loved ones can also lead to emotional issues such as depression and other mental and emotional health problems. Lack of contact can also exacerbate the dehumanization, violence, and stress of incarceration, limiting the prisoner’s ability to recognize their own and others’ humanity. Additionally, lack of familial support can be detrimental to the prisoner’s attempts to reintegrate into society after their release. Indeed, without family support, formerly incarcerated people are more likely to relapse into crime. As studies have shown, maintaining a strong connection to family and friends while incarcerated can help the incarcerated maintain a sense of humanity and connection to the outside world and encourage former prisoners to reenter the workforce and reduce the chances of recidivism.
In Her-Story in Black (Matters), incarcerated author Kavan Garrison attempts to tell the story of incarceration from outside the prison looking in. In doing so, Garrison also touches upon the daily issues that Black people face within their communities and within the prison. Watkins centers much of their narrative around the lives of Black women activists. These activists work to improve the local Black community and, after having some success, turn their attention to the prisons and prison conditions. By examining women who live outside the prison but have friend incarcerated, Garrison’s narrative recreates the anger, frustrations, and loneliness that incarceration creates for both those inside and outside of the prison.
One of the strengths of Garrison’s manuscript is how they use letter writing to demonstrate the emotional twists and turns that incarceration places upon relationships. Truly, the letters allow us to see the humanity of the incarcerated in a very intimate way. Indeed, many of these letters feel as if they were actual letters written by prisoners to friends and family. In one letter, written by fictitious prisoner Kage Weiler, Weiler talks about how politics have changed the conditions in the prison. Commenting on how the politics of race in the 2016 Presidential Election has changed how prison guards deal with prisoners, Weiler notes that “It is hectic around these parts, especially since Donald Trump lost the election. The officers are basically retaliating against us because a majority of the guys preferred Joe Biden’s type of government.” Here Garrison shows us that, although many prisoners do not have the right to vote, the political divide within American society has impacted the prison. The guards, frustrated at the conservative Trump’s loss in 2020, take out their frustrations on the prisoners who, to the guards, represent the economic and racial based problems of society broadly.
The prisoners, who didn’t get to vote, “preferred Joe Biden’s type of government.” Weiler says that the prisoners didn’t know much about Biden and what he could bring, but they were concerned with Trump’s punitive immigration policies. Here Garrison ties immigration detention together with domestic incarceration. As Weiler notes, “I feel like that’s one of the worst things the Trump Administration did. Not only because I can relate, but simply from the harsh facts about the conditions the asylum seekers are living in.” He goes on to state that, “They treat them worse than us.” With alarming stark description, Weiler notes that he has heard that there has “been reports about port-potty or toilets filled with feces, lack of feminine hygiene products like pads and tampons, overcrowded camp cages filled with kids, lack of proper food, and all sorts of human rights violations according to the ‘Nelson Mandela’ rules, which are recognized by the constitutions of the world…Maybe I shouldn’t be so selfish as I think about the difficulties I am facing?” Here, Weiler shows how incarceration dehumanizes people and creates feelings of solidarity amongst incarcerated people. Indeed, throughout his letters, his concerns reflect those of the immigrants in detention.
In another letter, Weiler discusses the problems that Covid has created within prisons. “The water went off three days ago,” writes Weiler, “and today it came back on. Imagine the conditions we’re living in…The building smells like human waste. Most of the guys have waste in their toilets, trash cans, and dirty clothes. The first day without water here almost started a riot of inmates against officers.” He goes into further details about access to clean water during COVID, “the Sergeant in charge brought up coolers of ice-cold water to the cell block. Before that, we had to use water from bags we used to workout with. These are homemade prison weights, so you can guess how old the water was. We drank that tarnished water after heating it in a milk carton over an open flame. They gave us trash bags and gloves. Baby, can you believe this mess? These folks actually gave us trash bags to shit in like we’re some kinda third world country.” Truly, the conditions in the prison had reached the point that the prisoners felt dehumanized. However, through these personal letters, you can feel Kage Weiler attempting to retain his humanity. He does this by acknowledging his shared struggles with immigrants in detention, and through his acknowledgement that he and his fellow prisoners are more deserving than such inhumane treatment.
These letters feel almost therapeutic for Weiler. He can be his most honest and personable when he writes because he is reaching out to his former life. In another letter, Weiler dives deep into the constant pressures that life in prison creates and how he can get people on the outside to understand their dehumanized living condition. “We’re suffering in this place on a daily basis, and the camera’s watching us, sees it all,” he explained. “The only question is, how can we make these cameras available to the public?” In many ways, Weiler answers his own question because it is through his letters that we can see inside the prison and the inhuman conditions.
Finally, these letters offer an unguarded look into Weiler as a partner, father, and friend. In the inhumane and violent prison system, prisoners tend to put up a hyper-masculine façade to protect themselves. However, after writing about feces in the shower or guards forcing the prisoners to drink dirty water, Weiler switched his tone and ended his letters with romantic or even heroic flourishes depending on the recipient. For his girlfriend, he used terms such as “Take care my love” or address his letters with “Dear queen.” To his friends he ends his letters by declaring his revolutionary solidarity. To his friend Lorraine, he invoked Black Power when he ended his letter with, “keep your fist up. Revolutionary love.” However, in the same letter he signed off with the post-script, “All lives Matter,” a known repudiation of the Black Lives Matters Movement. He offers no explanation. However, it must be considered that perhaps for Weiler “All Lives Matter” is an extension of his feelings of solidarity with the immigrants detained at the border by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Another example of how Garrison revealed the humanity of prisoners is through a conversation between a prisoner, Capone, and Alexis, a local activist. While around the prisoners and guards, Capone is loud and tough. He is a long-time prisoner and has the respect of many of the other prisoners. Alexis was new to prison activism and was unsure what to expect. But Garrison again shows us the humanity of the incarcerated through their encounter. When Alexis, who was taken aback by Capone’s stories of brutality and violence, asked Capone, “what are your motivations?” He responded:
Listen here Ms. Alexis. I’ve been locked up since I was twenty-one years old. I am not forty-five. I don’t know what it’s like to be thirty years old in the free world. I know how to be a man in here, but a part of me is still stuck at age twenty-one. The age of freedom, I call it. I’m far from childish but I do got a strong bond with the younger inmates, same as how I demonstrate leadership amongst my age group. I’m not saying I am a shot caller or nothing like that, for my intention is for the betterment of everyone around me. Therefore, folk tend to gravitate towards me.
Being a seasoned convict has that effect on ya. It’s like you could decipher coded messages easier that people in a free society. Being around another human being every day for years gives you some kind of understanding that’s unexplainable. Inmates and convicts can smell out weakness in a man like a rat can sniff cheese from yards away. Confidence, lies, straight, truth, and sincere-ness are also picked up on the inmate radar as a means of survival.
Here, Garrison uplifts the veil that prisoners hid behind to protect themselves. He also showed us how prisoners see the world and understand their situation and relationships to others. There is an honesty and sensitivity within Capone’s admission that betrays a deep sense of humanity that prison officials and conservative politicians hide through racialized tropes about crime and race.
Against the violence and machismo that permeates the prison in Garrison’s manuscript, the letters that he uses have his characters communicate to each other offer deep insight into who these people are. For a character like Kage Weiler, who may possibly be based on Garrison’s own experiences, we see the epitome of the strong masculine Black prisoner become a sensitive, intelligent, and politically aware person. We also see how his separation from his family and friends has affected his mental health and the importance he places in keeping in touch with them. Finally, and tragically, we see how the incarcerated are deprived of timely news through letter writing after Weiler’s girlfriend is killed and his son injured in a car accident on the way to visit him. Weiler writes a letter to them after they missed their scheduled visit with no idea what had happened to them. Indeed, it is through these letters that we can truly see the prison and its processes of dehumanization. They also connect us with the prisoners and their family, demonstrating the importance that prisoners maintain connections to systems of support to maintain their humanity. Otherwise, they can become so entrenched in the “prison life” that they can no longer function in society.
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