All Things Censored. - Review - book review

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 8, 2000 by Joy James

All Things Censored

Mumia Abu-Jamal, Noelle Hanrahan, John Wideman and Alice Walker Seven Stories Press 272 pages $29.95

Currently, some 70 percent of the 2 million people in U.S. jails, prisons and detention centers are people of color; approximately 1 million are African American. With the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, the United States is one of the few developed countries with capital punishment and one of a few democratic nations to execute minors. Two new books, The Soul Knows No Bars: Inmates Reflect on Life, Death, & Hope and All Things Censored, discuss imprisonment, philosophy, politics and personal and social struggles.

Neither book addresses the more than 138,000 women incarcerated in the United States. And although most men are in prison for nonviolent offenses, often related to the drug trade and addiction, The Soul Knows No Bars introduces us to men convicted of heinous crimes: rape, armed robbery, murder. Editor and co-author Drew Leder is a philosophy professor at Loyola College in Maryland who for several years also taught at Baltimore's Maryland Penitentiary. Charles Baxter, Wayne Brown, Tony Chatman-Bey, Jack Cowan, Michael Green, Gary Huffman, H. B. Johnson Jr., O'Donald Johnson, Arlando Jones III, Mark Medley, "Q," Donald Thompson, Selvyn Tillett and John Woodland attended his course at the Penitentiary and eventually became his co-authors.

The Soul Knows No Bars consists largely of edited transcripts from their class sessions. Their discussions of theory, morality and philosophy appear in six parts, each focusing on a different historic individual:

* Power -- Simon Well and Friedrich Nietzche;

* Architecture -- Michel Foucault;

* Space and time -- Martin Heidegger;

* Sex and race -- Cornel West;

* Journeys -- Joseph Campbell;

* Beginnings and endings -- Martin Buber and Malcolm X.

The book is somewhat constrained in that it never quite shakes the authoritative voice that academics wield while granting (or seeking) approval in relation to their students. Leder candidly explores the unequal power dynamics at work and displays considerable respect for his incarcerated students: "The convicts cared about ideas, more than many of my Loyola College students sentenced to serve out their required curriculum. I felt at home in this drab penitentiary classroom and so, seemingly, did the inmates." African American philosopher Cornel West, who lectured in Leder's class, writes in the foreword: "How I wish such high-quality pedagogical experiences could be had in schools and prisons across this nation and world!"

Still, the parameters within which the men reveal their souls are structured by Leder's training in philosophy. Readers might wonder what would have happened if Leder had included pioneering, provocative texts such as the anthology by African American philosophers, Philosophy Born of Struggle and Toni Morrison's collection of essays on race, culture and literature, Playing in the Dark.

One of the most engaging intellectuals, and the only one besides Leder to establish a name for himself before this volume, is H.B. Johnson Jr.

Incarcerated for armed robbery and attempted murder, sentenced for a minimum of 25 years, Johnson is described in the book: "Entering prison with an eighth-grade education, H.B. studied the works of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett, and was inspired to become a writer." His plays, poems and essays gained attention outside of prison. He won the WMAR-TV Black Playwrights contest, was featured on the NBC Today show and honored by the PEN American Center. Having contracted AIDS from drug use while in prison, Johnson's reflections reveal intimacy not only with prison culture and the street violence that led him to be incarcerated, but, one senses, an awareness of the proximity of his own death.

With the other prisoners,Johnson offers personal insights into culture and social relations. In discussing Foucault's panopticon and the prison as constant invasive surveillance, co-author Tillett remarks: "Different people react differently to the discipline. It might make you or break you." To which, Johnson responds: "The best is living a life where you don't have anything to hide. You don't care if the state's looking at you or not. You've done nothing wrong."

While The Soul Knows No Bars contributes to the growing literature about prison life and intellectuals, violence, power and morality, one of the most powerful and influential writers on social justice today is death row inmate and political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Live from Death Row, published in 1995, established him internationally as an intellectual. Leder might have been permanently banned from teaching this incisive book in the penitentiary, but one can only wonder what dynamic unfolds when Black prison intellectuals are able to read each other's works. Translated into seven languages, Abu-Jamal's books have sold more than 100,000 copies. Yet, his popularity as a writer also highlights his pending execution date.