Written by Brent Glass and Giovanna Phipps
What we're reading: Austin Reed: The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, published by Yale University Press in 2015, was edited and introduced by Caleb Smith, professor of English at Yale. This is a remarkable and rare memoir by an African-American man who spent more than thirty years incarcerated in various New York state institutions. In a compelling narrative, he reveals the "secrets and the habits of the convicts, with the mysteries and miseries of the Auburn Prison, together with the rules and regulations of the prison. . . " It is difficult and disturbing to read about the brutal conditions at Auburn. At the same time, Reed singles out individuals in the prison system who helped him and sustained him through his ordeal. Professor Smith's excellent introduction places Mr. Reed's story in the wider context of New York's prison history. Reed's manuscript had been unknown for 150 years until Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library acquired it in a private sale in 2009. To read this book, please visit your local library or acquire it online.
What we're listening to: “Bryan Stevenson on How America Can Heal,” from The Grey Area with Steven Illing focuses on the confrontation the US must have with its own history. Guest Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative as well as a clinical professor at the New York University School of Law. He is also the founder of one of the most provocative and important new museums in the USA called the The Legacy Musuem: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The podcast’s themes of truth and reconciliation are the focal point of this episode – specifically, Stevenson emphasizes the question: “What is a healthy relationship for a society to have with its own history?” This conversation asks the listener to confront their own personal relationship with their history as well as looking from the perspective of a member of American society. Stevenson notes that our biggest problem is that a large part of our population is not adequately educated about the realities of the past three hundred years. To learn more, listen wherever you get your podcasts.
What we're listening to: “Bryan Stevenson on How America Can Heal,” from The Grey Area with Steven Illing focuses on the confrontation the US must have with its own history. Guest Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative as well as a clinical professor at the New York University School of Law. He is also the founder of one of the most provocative and important new museums in the USA called the The Legacy Musuem: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The podcast’s themes of truth and reconciliation are the focal point of this episode – specifically, Stevenson emphasizes the question: “What is a healthy relationship for a society to have with its own history?” This conversation asks the listener to confront their own personal relationship with their history as well as looking from the perspective of a member of American society. Stevenson notes that our biggest problem is that a large part of our population is not adequately educated about the realities of the past three hundred years. To learn more, listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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