First and foremost, I must thank my friend and colleague, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., without whose invitation to give Harvard’s DuBois Lectures, this book would never have been written. The purpose of those lectures is to contribute to our better understanding of African American life, history, and culture. As, over years, I contemplated giving those lectures, I could think of no topic more important than the ravages of mass incarceration. Yet that topic, that material was too hard, too personal. Without a firm date, a room booked and an audience expected, I’m not sure I would ever have been able to finish this.
Second, I thank my friend, Quiara Alegria Hudes, whose own public statement about a cousin, a chapter in my book Education and Equality, gave me the courage to start.
To my family, of course, I owe everything. My parents and brother, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My former husband and stepsons. My husband and children. All have in one way or another helped author this book.
My daughter, Nora, came across me one evening at work with photos of Michael spread out.
Who is that, she wanted to know?
“It’s Michael.”
“Who is Michael?” she said.
Well, Nora, this is Michael.
If the material was hard for me, it was excruciating for my aunt Karen and cousins Nicholas and Roslyn, who endured repeated interviews and my insistent, continuous probing. Each of us had been seeking understanding, and peace, through a solitary journey. Never had we tried to assemble our story together. While the process has been painful, I believe we have all achieved greater clarity. By and by, we have come to understand, at least in part, and this can put some of our incessant mourning to rest, I hope.
My agent, Tina Bennett, my editor, Bob Weil, and miracle-working assistant Emily Bromley are stalwart friends, advocates, and teachers. They believe in me, and we should all be so lucky to have their sort of fierce support.
Many, many more assisted, too, of course. My friends and colleagues at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, in the Government Department and Graduate School of Education, in the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, in the Department of African and African American Studies. My students across campus, of course. And all of the extraordinary scholars and writers—people like Bruce Western, Elizabeth Hinton, Glenn Loury, Rajiv Sethi, Tommie Shelby, Brandon Terry, Michael Fortner, Michelle Alexander, Jill Leovy—and so many others who have at last opened up the story of mass incarceration so that we may all consider our circumstances with clear eyes.
Also, this story could never have been written without able and generous legal work by Joshua Milon, without the courteous and sympathetic assistance of staff in the Los Angeles courts archives and records offices, without the smiling help of staff in several branches of the Los Angeles County library system, and without the patient responsiveness of Irene Wakabayashi, in the District Attorney’s Office, who fielded my multiple public records requests.
I am also grateful to all the people at Norton and Liveright who have helped make this book possible, especially Peter Miller, Cordelia Calvert, and Marie Pantojan.
Finally, I want to say thank you to the many people who came up to me after I relayed Michael’s story for the first time, in those DuBois Lectures, and said, I, too, love someone who is in prison or I, too, have lost someone to the ravages of the world of drugs. So many people shared their own painful stories with me. You, too, are in my heart’s locket.