Review of Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison

Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison

Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative.

Edited by Louis Bourgeois.

VOX Press. 2024.

Book review by Sarah Gelbard

In the context of the current cultural moment that is obsessed with so-called “true crime” podcasts, series, and documentaries, this collection of writings serves as an important counter-narrative of true incarceration. Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison is “a book told straight from the heart of this notorious unit from over 30 inmates.” The 200+ page collection includes poems, reflections, stories, journal entries, and other writings by incarcerated students in the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative (PWI) at Parchman Prison. It is the latest in a series of prison writing publications by VOX Press, this one written by students in Unit 29 between November of 2021 to June 2024. 

For those unfamiliar with Parchman Prison and Unit 29, as I was, Parchman Prison, also known as Parchman Farm, is the maximum-security Mississippi State Penitentiary for men. Established in 1901, scholars, historians, and community members have long recognized the role of the prison farm as a continuation of plantations and modern-day slavery. Unit 29 houses minimum, medium, and closed custody inmates, including those on death row.

The notoriously inhumane environmental and psychological conditions faced by those incarcerated at Parchman have been the target of recurring lawsuits, advocacy, and reform initiatives for decades. The most public recent example is the civil rights lawsuit led by Team Roc, Jay-Z, and Yo Gotti on behalf of 29 inmates, and is mentioned by several of the authors in this book. The lawsuit, a related investigation by the Justice Department, and the stories, particularly of the families and loved ones of men who have died in the prison, are also featured in the 2023 documentary “Exposing Parchman.”

The editor of Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison and principal instructor of PWI, Louis Bourgeois, highlights the importance of publishing and amplifying the writings of “prisoners who seldom get to tell their side of the story about the incarceration experience.”  In his contribution to the collection, Drugs, Corey Carroll writes: 

If you’re reading this, then I can assure you that no book or movie about prison can explain what it’s like to be here. Movies and books can’t capture the mental abuse (with words and cameras) that you go through. It may look cool or easy on TV, but remember, those are actors. It leaves out the most important parts: your children growing up without a father, being at the funeral where your childhood friend dies, watching your child’s first steps. You get the idea. It may even portray that in film. But no director in the world can make you feel those feelings. Time and events that you’ll never get back.

Now I face a dilemma in writing a review for a book that not only emphasizes the importance of letting those whose story it is to tell do the telling, but also a book that does so by jumping right into the writings without introduction or forward, without conclusion. How do I amplify and respect that intention while also providing you, the reader, with a “review”? A compromise. First, I’ve selected a collection of quotes that stood out for me and as a sample of reading what, even in their longform published format, are just glimpses of the bigger stories. I’ll conclude with some reflections about prison writing as a genre and what the readers of Progressive City might get from engaging with this work.

In order to survive in

Prison, you must respect

The lines that prison

Creates.

– Prison Creates Lines by Leon Johnson 

“Time seems to stand still in 29. Sometimes the same repetitive things happen. My day is the same every damn day.” – Hell Hole by Jacob Neal

“A hostile environment filled with as many broken and lonely, lost people just trying to maintain a purpose.” – G-Building Reflections by Derrick Willis

 “Being sentenced to death was not the worst thing that happened to me that day; witnessing the utter destruction of my family was.” – Scars by Steve Wilbanks

“I go to church every Wed, Thur., and Sunday, and listen to Christian songs and sermons on the radio almost daily—but at the same time, I believe God never loved me to start with, that he took me for granted, just being real—I believe he hates me.” – My Time in the Hole by Nathan Sumrall

 “A world where violence is expected and condoned for entertainment. Police see it that you committed a crime, so you deserve to experience trauma, suffering, starving. They see how food is served barely enough, bugs in it, half done, cold, they don’t care. Eat it or get up and get out.” – A Day in the Life of Me by Larry Jenkins

“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” – Just One More Night by Whitzey Walker

“Some people like it when other people suffer, it makes them feel better about their own lives—in a sick way. I’m not saying everyone, just some people.” – My Life in Prison by Nathan Sumrall

“Parchman is not the place for people who want rehabilitation, but a place for those who only want to continue to further destroy themselves.” – Thoughts by Christopher Smith

I’m really free within. Prison don’t have any Real chains on me.

– Not Institutionalized by Leon Johnson 

Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison is part of a long tradition of prison writing. There are many recurring themes throughout the individual contributions and themes shared with other prison writing publications: the monotony of routine; family; relationships; faith and religion; the physical and psychological impacts; neglect; abuse; violence; rehabilitation. Overall, this collection offers a complex glimpse at the people surviving Unit 29 (though not all do), and their lived experience of day-to-day life in isolation from the free world. 

Prison writing is frequently analysed and deployed to engage and promote narratives of rehabilitation, as a job skill, and healing through art. And there are certainly moments throughout this collection that could speak to those perspectives and agenda. But it is also powerful, as a writer reading other writers, to see reflected in their writings the underlying reality that we write for many reasons, day to day, and person to person: some noble, some creative, some healing, some practical, some to organize thoughts, and some because it is the task that is assigned. 

Several of the authors of this collection write about writing, their participation in the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative, and their reasons for writing. Many of the authors in this collection also address us, their readers, directly, expressing their hopes about what their readers might take away from reading their work. In his piece, Prison Violence and Death, Matthew Moberg writes: “My only hope is that one day someone may read my writings and be like oh that place really sounds like shit.” I loved the part when William McCain breaks that fourth wall in Ramblings From A Tired And Broken Lifer and directly tells us: “Now if you can’t make sense out of all this chatter, it’s just to kill time and it doesn’t even matter.” There are more targeted calls to action like in The Way Things Are, Jacob Neal writes “In my opinion, 29 is a lost cause and needs to be shut down. It’s really a humanitarian crisis, if you ask me. The public really has no idea how bad it is here.”

To readers of Progressive City, to the planning professionals, academics, and community organizers, Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison and other prison writings offer important, explicit accounts and reflections on the real impacts of our complicity in reproducing spatial injustice through the many ways planning creates, enables, and perpetuates prisons. For those of us working with community towards prison abolition and decarceration, these lived experiences are important reminders of the human rights violations we have a responsibility to address. These firsthand stories remind us that those with lived experience are important active participants in the struggle to dismantle these oppressive spaces and systems. 

Progressive City's Planning for Decarceral Spaces for Collective Action series is one example of holding more space for these difficult discussions and experiences, including articles such as Against Carcerality: Planning, Strategizing, and Organizing for Decarceral Spaces and Reimagining Safety, Advancing Visions for a Decarceral City. We might also look to the revision of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct adopted by the American Institute of Architects in 2020, prohibiting members from “knowingly designing spaces intended for execution and torture, including indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more per day without meaningful human contact, for more than 15 consecutive days.”

I appreciated reading this collection not just as an abolitionist and advocate for decarceration. I take to heart the need to also read prison writings as writing, and what Barrett and colleagues argue is a need “to shift academics and instructors’ perceptions of incarcerated populations from people who are changed by education to complex individuals who are thinking about writing just like others on the inside and outside.” 

There is no need to romanticize this book or its authors. I don’t imagine that any of the contributing authors would want me to. It was not an easy or pleasant book to read cover to cover, and clearly was not a pleasant one to write. Throughout the collected writings, there are not just descriptions of racism, misogyny, violence, there are also some racist, misogynistic, and violent opinions and statements that were difficult to sit with. I do not necessarily come away from reading this book liking or connecting with each of its authors or their writing. I do appreciate the work as a collection, as largely uncensored documentation and reflections that are:

Unapologetic, despite the many apologies offered to loved ones and those harmed.

Captivating, despite the many detailed accounts of monotonous routines. 

Brutal, despite the many moments of human connection and love while faced with the inhumane.

Unimaginable, despite the many described experiences that make us, the reader, realise it all too real.