Solitary: A Biography
An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship . . . Woodfox reminds us, in Solitary, of the tens of thousands of men, women, and children in solitary confinement in the United States. This is torture of a modern variety. If the ending of this book does not leave you with tears pooling down in your clavicles, you are a stronger person than I am. More lasting is Woodfox’s conviction that the American justice system is in dire need of reform.”―Dwight Garner, New York Times
“A candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle . . . as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country’s prisons . . . It’s impossible to read Solitary and not feel anger . . . A timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.”―NPR
“Heart-rending . . . Solitary is Woodfox’s pointillist account of an already boxed-in childhood and adolescence in the streets of New Orleans―by his own admission, an existence marked by ignorance and devoted to petty and increasingly serious crime―and the near entirety of an intellectually and spiritually expansive adulthood spent in one of the most brutal prisons in the country (and therefore the world) . . . Some of the most touching writing on platonic male friendship I have every encountered . . . ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy,’ Camus famously wrote, and such a prompt is the ennobling virtue at the core of Solitary. It lifts the book above mere advocacy or even memoir and places it in the realm of stoic philosophy.”―Thomas Chatterton Williams, New York Times Book Review
“Wrenching, sometimes numbing, sometimes almost physically painful to read. You want to turn away, put the book down: Enough, no more! But you can’t, because after forty-plus years, the very least we owe Woodfox is attention to his story . . . [Solitary’s] moral power is so overwhelming . . . Solitary should make every reader writhe with shame and ask: What am I going to do to help change this?”―Washington Post
“Solitary is evidence of Woodfox’s extraordinary mental resilience in the face of relentless state cruelty. The pacing is brisk, with brief stops to reflect on the United States’ mass incarceration of black people, Woodfox’s black identity, and his personal philosophy, much of it centered on the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program. Woven together, these strands form an indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system that should be read for generations.”―Globe and Mail
An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship . . . Woodfox reminds us, in Solitary, of the tens of thousands of men, women, and children in solitary confinement in the United States. This is torture of a modern variety. If the ending of this book does not leave you with tears pooling down in your clavicles, you are a stronger person than I am. More lasting is Woodfox’s conviction that the American justice system is in dire need of reform.”―Dwight Garner, New York Times
“A candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle . . . as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country’s prisons . . . It’s impossible to read Solitary and not feel anger . . . A timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.”―NPR
“Heart-rending . . . Solitary is Woodfox’s pointillist account of an already boxed-in childhood and adolescence in the streets of New Orleans―by his own admission, an existence marked by ignorance and devoted to petty and increasingly serious crime―and the near entirety of an intellectually and spiritually expansive adulthood spent in one of the most brutal prisons in the country (and therefore the world) . . . Some of the most touching writing on platonic male friendship I have every encountered . . . ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy,’ Camus famously wrote, and such a prompt is the ennobling virtue at the core of Solitary. It lifts the book above mere advocacy or even memoir and places it in the realm of stoic philosophy.”―Thomas Chatterton Williams, New York Times Book Review
“Wrenching, sometimes numbing, sometimes almost physically painful to read. You want to turn away, put the book down: Enough, no more! But you can’t, because after forty-plus years, the very least we owe Woodfox is attention to his story . . . [Solitary’s] moral power is so overwhelming . . . Solitary should make every reader writhe with shame and ask: What am I going to do to help change this?”―Washington Post
“Solitary is evidence of Woodfox’s extraordinary mental resilience in the face of relentless state cruelty. The pacing is brisk, with brief stops to reflect on the United States’ mass incarceration of black people, Woodfox’s black identity, and his personal philosophy, much of it centered on the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program. Woven together, these strands form an indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system that should be read for generations.”―Globe and Mail
An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship . . . Woodfox reminds us, in Solitary, of the tens of thousands of men, women, and children in solitary confinement in the United States. This is torture of a modern variety. If the ending of this book does not leave you with tears pooling down in your clavicles, you are a stronger person than I am. More lasting is Woodfox’s conviction that the American justice system is in dire need of reform.”―Dwight Garner, New York Times
“A candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle . . . as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country’s prisons . . . It’s impossible to read Solitary and not feel anger . . . A timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.”―NPR
“Heart-rending . . . Solitary is Woodfox’s pointillist account of an already boxed-in childhood and adolescence in the streets of New Orleans―by his own admission, an existence marked by ignorance and devoted to petty and increasingly serious crime―and the near entirety of an intellectually and spiritually expansive adulthood spent in one of the most brutal prisons in the country (and therefore the world) . . . Some of the most touching writing on platonic male friendship I have every encountered . . . ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy,’ Camus famously wrote, and such a prompt is the ennobling virtue at the core of Solitary. It lifts the book above mere advocacy or even memoir and places it in the realm of stoic philosophy.”―Thomas Chatterton Williams, New York Times Book Review
“Wrenching, sometimes numbing, sometimes almost physically painful to read. You want to turn away, put the book down: Enough, no more! But you can’t, because after forty-plus years, the very least we owe Woodfox is attention to his story . . . [Solitary’s] moral power is so overwhelming . . . Solitary should make every reader writhe with shame and ask: What am I going to do to help change this?”―Washington Post
“Solitary is evidence of Woodfox’s extraordinary mental resilience in the face of relentless state cruelty. The pacing is brisk, with brief stops to reflect on the United States’ mass incarceration of black people, Woodfox’s black identity, and his personal philosophy, much of it centered on the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program. Woven together, these strands form an indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system that should be read for generations.”―Globe and Mail
Publication Date: December 3, 2019
ISBN-10 : 0802148301
ISBN-13 : 978-0802148308
Author: Albert Woodfox
Publisher: Grove Press
Pages: 448
