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<p><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Albert Woodfox, the author of Solitary
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<em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">A public conversation with Anne Fadiman</span></b></em><br>
Thursday, October 1, 2020, 6 PM<br>
<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Co-Sponsored by Francis Conversations with Writers Series,</span></em><i><br>
<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Yale English Department’s Initiative on Literature and Racial Justice</span></em><br>
<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">and the Yale Prison Education Initiative</span></em></i><br>
ZOOM link forthcoming<br>
Contact: <a href="https://english.yale.edu/about/contact-us">Yale English Department
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<p class="MsoNormal">At 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, there will be a public conversation via Zoom with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Albert Woodfox, the author of <em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em></b><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">. </span></em>Woodfox's
account of the forty years he spent in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. This will be the Fall 2020 event in the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>Francis Conversations with
Writers<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></u>series, in collaboration with <u>Yale English Department’s Initiative on Literature and Racial Justice</u> and the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>Yale Prison Education Initiative</u>.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <i>Albert Woodfox was born in 1947 in New Orleans. A committed activist in prison, he remains so today, speaking to a wide array of audiences, including the Innocence Project, Harvard, Yale, and other universities, the National Lawyers
Guild, as well as at Amnesty International events in London, Paris, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium. He lives in New Orleans.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Information about the book is below, as well as a brief passage. In light of our current events, this important event is apt to be of vital and widespread interest to students, faculty, and the general campus community. Please disseminate
this information as widely as possible and perhaps mention it to students directly. Indeed, perhaps consider adding the event to your syllabi, no matter course focus, as a way of signaling our collective commitment to these crucial issues. <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Jessica Brantley, Chair, Department of English || Anne Fadiman, Francis Writer in Residence || Richard Deming, Director of Creative Writing<o:p></o:p></p>
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About the Book<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION</span></strong><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Solitary</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana—all
for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems
is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in his early twenties to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living, Albert was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery
when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice
that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became
known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Solitary</i>, a chronicle of rare power and humanity
that proves the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> Praise for <em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION</span></strong><b><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION</span></strong><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Named One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2019</span></strong><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></b><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Named a Best Book of the Year by the</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">New York Times</span></b></em><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">,
the</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Washington Post</span></b></em><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">, NPR,</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Publishers
Weekly</span></b></em><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">,</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">BookBrowse</span></b></em><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">,
and</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Literary Hub</span></b></em><b><i><br>
</i><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Winner of the</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">BookBrowse</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Award
for Best Debut of 2019</span></strong></b><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">A </span></strong><em><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">New York Times Book Review</span></b></em><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Editors’ Choice</span></strong><b><br>
<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Named a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Publishers Weekly</span></em></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship . . . Woodfox reminds us, in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em>,
of the tens of thousands of men, women, and children in solitary confinement in the United States. This is torture of a modern variety. If the ending of this book does not leave you with tears pooling down in your clavicles, you are a stronger person than
I am. More lasting is Woodfox’s conviction that the American justice system is in dire need of reform.”—Dwight Garner,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">New York Times</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“A candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle . . . as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country’s prisons . . . It’s impossible to read<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and
not feel anger . . . A timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.”—NPR<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“Heart-rending . . .<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is Woodfox’s pointillist account of an already boxed-in childhood
and adolescence in the streets of New Orleans—by his own admission, an existence marked by ignorance and devoted to petty and increasingly serious crime—and the near entirety of an intellectually and spiritually expansive adulthood spent in one of the most
brutal prisons in the country (and therefore the world) . . . Some of the most touching writing on platonic male friendship I have every encountered . . . ‘We must imagine Sisyphus happy,’ Camus famously wrote, and such a prompt is the ennobling virtue at
the core of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em>. It lifts the book above mere advocacy or even memoir and places it in the realm of stoic philosophy.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">New
York Times Book Review</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“Wrenching, sometimes numbing, sometimes almost physically painful to read. You want to turn away, put the book down: Enough, no more! But you can’t, because after forty-plus years, the very least we owe Woodfox is attention to his story
. . . [<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em>’s] moral power is so overwhelming . . .<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>should
make every reader writhe with shame and ask: What am I going to do to help change this?”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Washington Post</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is evidence of Woodfox’s extraordinary mental resilience in the face of relentless state cruelty. The pacing is brisk, with
brief stops to reflect on the United States’ mass incarceration of black people, Woodfox’s black identity, and his personal philosophy, much of it centered on the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program. Woven together, these strands form an indictment of the
U.S. criminal justice system that should be read for generations.”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Globe and Mail</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“We have had the opportunity to read a new book called<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>by Albert Woodfox. Anyone
who believes in capital punishment should read it . . . We should consider the story of Albert Woodfox. How can you call for the death penalty when you know an innocent man could be in the gallows? Is that risk civilized society can take? Not here, not now.
Not ever again.”—Art Cullen,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Storm Lake Times</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“[Woodfox’s] incredible story is necessary reading, not only to understand our era of mass incarceration, but the entire history of the judicial system in America.”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Town & Country</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“In this devastating, superb memoir, Woodfox reflects on his decades inside the Louisiana prison system . . . The book is a stunning indictment of a judicial system ‘not concerned with innocence or justice,’ and a crushing account of the
inhumanity of solitary confinement. This breathtaking, brutal, and intelligent book will move and inspire readers.”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Publishers Weekly</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(starred review)<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“In beautifully poetic language that starkly contrasts the world he’s describing, Woodfox awes and inspires. He illustrates the power of the human spirit, while illuminated the dire need for prison reform in the United States.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is
a beautiful blend of passion, terror, and hope that everyone needs to experience.”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Shelf Awareness</span></em>(starred review)<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“A man who spent four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit tells his shocking story . . . Woodfox explains how he overcame [brutal conditions] despite relentless despair . . . An important story for these times
. . . An astonishing true saga of incarceration that would have surely faced rejection if submitted as a novel on the grounds that it could never happen in real life.”—<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Kirkus Reviews</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is an astounding story and makes clear the inhumanity of solitary confinement. How Albert Woodfox maintained his compassion
and sense of hope throughout his ordeal is both amazing and inspiring.”—Ibram X. Kendi, author of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Stamped from the Beginning</span></em>, winner of the National Book
Award<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“Sage, profound and deeply humane, Albert Woodfox has authored an American testament.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>is
not simply an indictment of the cruelties, absurdities and hypocrisies of the criminal justice system, it is a call to conscience for all who have allowed these acts to be done in our name.”—Jelani Cobb, author of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The
Substance of Hope</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“A man who would not be broken. Not by more than 40 years of solitary in Angola, not by maddening injustice in courts, not by beatings, isolation, or loneliness. Albert’s courage, wisdom, and kindness will inspire all who fight for social
justice and have the good sense to read this book.”—Barry Scheck, Co-Founder of the Innocence Project<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“Albert Woodfox’s extraordinary life story is both an inspiring triumph of the human spirit and a powerful call for the necessity of prison reform.”—Van Jones, President of the Dream Corps and Host of CNN’s “The Van Jones Show”<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“Albert Woodfox shares his coming-of-age story with crystal clear-eyed perspective, holding nothing back as he unwraps the unvarnished truth of his life. Deftly weaving the undeniable threads of race, class, and systemic inequities that
made his story—and so many similar ones—possible, his journey of resilience, perseverance, growth, and triumph is at once a cautionary tale, a challenge to all we think we know about the justice system, and an inspiring testimony to the power of the human
spirit.”<strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">—</span></strong>Reverend Leah Daughtry, co-author of <em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is the stunning record of a hero’s journey. In it a giant, Albert Woodfox, carries us boldly and without apology through
the powerful, incredibly painful yet astonishingly inspiring story of a life lived virtually in chains. He is, as readers will learn, a ‘Man of Steel.’<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Every white person in America<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">must</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>read this book. It should be required reading for every
advocate of ‘law and order,’ every prosecutor, every warden, every prison guard and every police officer in America. It should be taught in every law school and every political science class. And any ‘public servant’ currently holding a local, state or federal
office who refuses to read it should step down.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">As a citizen of the United States, this book embarrasses me deeply. And it makes me furious.”—Mike Farrell, author of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Just Call Me Mike</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Of
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:16.0pt"> Excerpt from </span></b><em><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Solitary</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I woke in the dark. Everything I owned fit into two plastic garbage bags in the corner of my cell. “When are these folks gonna let you out,” my mom used to ask me. Today, mom, I thought. The first thing I’d do is go to her grave. For years
I lived with the burden of not saying goodbye to her. That was a heavy weight I’d been carrying.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I rose and made my bed, swept and mopped the floor. I took off my sweatpants and folded them, placing them in one of the bags. I put on an orange prison jumpsuit required for my court appearance that morning. A friend had given me street
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<p class="MsoNormal">Many people wrote me in prison over the years, asking me how I survived four decades in a single cell, locked down 23 hours a day. I turned my cell into a university, I wrote them, a hall of debate, a law school. By taking a stand and not
backing down, I told them. I believed in humanity, I said. I loved myself. The hopelessness, the claustrophobia, the brutality, the fear, I didn’t say. I looked out the window. A news van was parked down the road outside the jail, headlights still on, though
it was getting light now. I’ll be able to go anywhere. To see the night sky. I sat back on my bunk and waited.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">***<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">The Yale-Readings Listserv is sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. To post announcements about poetry and fiction readings, send the full text
of the announcement, including contact information, to <a href="http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/yale-readings">
<span style="color:#0563C1">nancy.kuhl at yale.edu.</span></a> Messages sent directly to the Yale-Readings list may not be posted.
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<br>
</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt">For more information about Poetry at the Beinecke Library, visit: Poetry at Beinecke Library:
<a href="https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library"><span style="color:#0563C1">https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library</span></a></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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