What We're Reading

This is where the Sing Sing Prison Museum community, authors, scholars, and book lovers can find recommendations, thought-provoking discussion questions, and access to conversations with authors and journalists about the deep-reaching ecosystem of the criminal justice system. This will be an opportunity for readers to expand their knowledge of the criminal justice system through works of fiction, nonfiction, and other mediums. SSPM will showcase a plethora of voices and perspectives to unlock the past and open minds.

In honor of Pride month, SSPM highlights two pieces of media pertaining to the experience of LGBTQ+ individuals within prisons. Focusing on the Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by High Ryan and "Do You Know Who I Am" from the Ear Hustle podcast. Read more about both on our blog.

The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo

This month we are honored to feature an autobiography "The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo," by former Sing Sing incarcerated individual, George Appo, and edited by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. The book follows the first-hand account of Appo, a pickpocket and con man, who spent his early years in various penitentiaries and prisons in New York. He recalls his time in Sing Sing Prison, providing insight into corruption, corporal punishment, and incarceration.

Appo, an orphaned Chinese American, lived in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City. His upbringing taught him to do whatever was necessary to survive. At the age of 15, Appo was caught pickpocketing, charged, and sentenced to time on the school ship called "Mercury." Throughout his life, Appo was in and out of different prisons until the early 20th century.

His account of Sing Sing gives an insider perspective on prison life during the late 1800s and early 1900s. He describes a system of informal entitlements created by prison guards: the incarcerated people could pay and bribe guards to receive newspapers, tobacco, and even could be exempt from hard labor. Appo also discusses another administrative system in which, to cut costs, prison administrators would assign office work to inmates. This allowed them to manipulate records and change release dates for other inmates.

Through his description of corruption and corporal punishment, Appo raises the question: What is the purpose of prisons? Is it to reform incarcerated individuals? Is it to separate them from the general public? Is it to take advantage of cheap labor?

Read Appo's autobiography here: https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Underworld-Late-Nineteenth-Century-York-ebook/dp/B07L9F65LJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VSHTTR4UEO0F&keywords=george+appo&qid=1659373572&sprefix=george+appo%2Caps%2C63&sr=8-1

Pride Month

The Ossining Public Library has kindly put together a LibGuide for Pride Month. You can read more about Pride Month and access relevant resources here.

Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wraparound Incarceration by Jerry Flores

From home, to school, to juvenile detention center, and back again. Follow the lives of fifty Latina girls living forty miles outside of Los Angeles, California, as they are inadvertently caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline. Their experiences in the connected programs between “El Valle” Juvenile Detention Center and “Legacy” Community School reveal the accelerated fusion of California schools and institutions of confinement. The girls participate in well-intentioned wraparound services designed to provide them with support at home, at school, and in the detention center. But these services may more closely resemble the phenomenon of wraparound incarceration, in which students, despite leaving the actual detention center, cannot escape the surveillance of formal detention, and are thereby slowly pushed away from traditional schooling and a productive life course.

Purchase here

Watch Sing Sing Prison Museum in Conversation with Jerry Flores

Also Available in Spanish

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Colson Whitehead writes the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. When Elwood Curtis, a Black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative.

Guided Questions:

The Nickel Boys is a fictionalized account of a real reformatory school in Florida, The Dozier School for Boys, which Whitehead learned about from a news report after archeology students discovered human remains on the grounds of the school. Whitehead felt compelled to write about this real school from a fictionalized perspective of his two protagonists, Turner and Elwood. As a reader, what steps do you think a writer should take while writing a novel based on a true story? After reading the Nickel Boys, is there anything you would’ve done differently to tell this story if you were the author?
(Provided by Penguin Random House) While in the infirmary, Elwood reads a pamphlet about Nickel that details the contributions the school has made to the community, including bricks from the brick-making machine “propping up buildings all over Jackson County.” What do you think of the ways that the wider community seemed to benefit from labor performed by Nickel students? Do you see any historical or modern-day parallels to this symbiotic relationship?
(Provided by Penguin Random House) One student, Jaimie, is half-Mexican and constantly shuffled between the “white” and “colored” sections of Nickel Academy. Why do you think the author included a character with Jaimie’s ethnic identity in this story?
Turner and Elwood are two characters with different outlooks on life. Turner is an individualist, believing that reality is harsh and the only way to survive it is by keeping to oneself and not getting in trouble. Elwood is an admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr. and believes if one confronts and exposes injustice, people will do the right thing. How do these two outlooks play a role in the novel?
What was your knowledge of reform schools before reading the Nickel Boys? Has your understanding of reform schools changed since reading this novel? What is the role of reform schools in the United States and what do you think can be done to make them more equitable?