Ep. 266 We Are the Ones Who Make the World with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Award-winning author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah joins us for a spoiler-free discussion of his new novel Chain-Gang All Stars. He shares the pressures he’s felt ahead of releasing his second book, and his trepidation around how the book will be received in prison abolition spaces. Plus, we find out what makes revision so important to Nana, and how he thinks about employing violence in the book to help tell this story.

The Stacks Book Club selection for May is This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris. We will discuss the book on May 31st with Nicole Chung.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Photo: Alex M. Philip

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Connect with Nana: Instagram | Twitter | Website
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The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.

Ep. 250 A Litany of Abuses with Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham

Today we’re joined by two award-winning journalists from the field of criminal justice and police misconduct. Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham have coauthored the book The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland, an exposé following many years of investigation of The Oakland Police Department. We get into why they wanted to write about the OPD in the first place, and ask whether the police can be reformed. We also discuss how the authors feel their own identities played into their writing of the book.

The Stacks Book Club selection for January is The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis. We will discuss the book on January 25th with Chelsea Devantez.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

Connect with Ali: Twitter
Connect with Darwin: Twitter
Connect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Subscribe

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.


The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website,

Ep. 243 Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law — The Stacks Book Club (Mariame Kaba)

Today anti-violence activist and author Mariame Kaba returns to discuss Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law for The Stacks Book Club. We highlight the depth of knowledge that this book provides about the history and current state of criminalization, and unpack the idea that prison is something that ties us all together. We ask why so many so-called reforms look like prison and policing, and what solutions might work in their place.

Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our December book club pick will be.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Connect with Mariame: Twitter | Website
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To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.


The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.

The Stacks Book Club – November 2022

Our Stacks Book Club selection for November is Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, co-authored by journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law, with a foreword by author and civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander. The book is a searing exposé of the state-sanctioned violence and social control engineered by so-called alternative solutions to incarceration, from surveillance and house arrest to mandated psyche and drug treatments. It peels away the deceptively kind narrative around reform which actually obscures an oppressive and self-perpetuating status quo in crime and punishment. Prison By Any Other Name argues for real change and seeks to inspire a more humane and empowered approach to justice.

We will discuss Prison By Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law on Wednesday, November 30th. You can find out who our guest will be by listening to the podcast on November 2nd. If you’d like even more discussion around the book, consider joining The Stacks Pack on Patreon and participating in The Stacks’ monthly virtual book club.

Order your copy of our November book on Bookshop.org and Amazon, or listen to the audiobook through Libro.FM.


To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/thestacks). We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of The Stacks.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed. For more information click here.

All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island by Liza Jessie Peterson

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I picked this book up as part of a buddy read on #bookstagram. A buddy read is basically a one off book club, you all read the book and then discuss it (through video chat). All Day was the third book I’ve read with this group, and was our first miss, but it led to some great conversations. Before I dive in here is a little more about All Day.

 

Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, ALL DAY recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson’s classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City’s Rikers Island. A poet and actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill-prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths. For the first time faced with full days teaching the rambunctious, hyper, and fragile adolescent inmates, “Ms. P” comes to understand the essence of her predominantly Black and Latino students as she attempts not only to educate them, but to instill them with a sense of self-worth long stripped from their lives.

All Day was a total miss. A book about incarcerated juveniles at Rikers Island and their teacher sounds like it would be a gripping and compelling narrative, Peterson, however, does not deliver. The book is mostly focused on Peterson and her thoughts and struggles, though she never gets vulnerable enough for us to fully see her. She puts up the front of a tough woman, but we never get to see her softer side. She barely shares with us information about her students and their lives and how they got to Rikers (however the few moments she does are great). Peterson mistakes the readers interest in what it is like to be a teacher at a jail, for what its like to be her. I did not care about her as the star of this story, I wanted to know about the boys, their lives, their struggles, and the battles they fight daily to survive. I felt most connected to the book when the boys were centered.

The writing is not great. The style is very casual, using a lot of slang. Peterson is making a point to her reader, that she is in fact a Black woman. Something that no one questions. She has insecurities around her own control and status, and they come across through out the book, both expressly and through inference. The book goes on too long and Peterson loses focus, drifting from subject to subject without any real points to be made. She retells the same stories over and over and tries to turn this book into a sort of comedy, relaying jokes and quippy interchanges between her and her students. Most of this is not funny, and makes little sense in the context of the book.

Peterson herself traffics in prejudices throughout the book. While she doesn’t say it expressly, the way she talks about the boys who come from single parent homes, how she dismisses their learning disabilities, and the words she uses to describe them are problematic and damaging. There is very little empathy toward them and their situation. She perpetuates stereotypes about Black and Latino youths, and even allows her own intuitions to be bases for condemnation. All Day was published by a very conservative publisher (Center Street), and this anti-Black lean allowed the publisher to get credit for a Black narrative by a Black female author, and still push forward damaging ideas about Black and Brown youth to their audiences.

I would not recommend you read this book. There is much better content (books, films, and TV) that captures the experiences of life as an incarcerated youth, and that of the people who work with them. All Day is self serving and has a conservative lean that is troubling and damaging.

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Center Street (April 18, 2017)
  • 1/5 stars
  • Buy All Day on Amazon

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/thestacks). We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of The Stacks.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs in which we receive a small commission when products are purchased through some links on this website. This does not effect my opinions on books and products. For more information click here.