Prison Masculinities Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent collection from a wide range of contributors. As America becomes more and more of a prison nation, prison masculinity is rapidly becoming the model for all masculinity, and understanding it becomes more and more essential not only for gender scholars but for anyone interested in thinking critically about our culture.

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This book explores the frightening ways our prisons mirror the worst aspects of society-wide gender relations. It is part of the growing research on men and masculinities. This collection is unusual in that it combines contributions from activists, academics, and prisoners. The opening section, which features an essay by Angela Davis, focuses on the historical roots of the prison system, cultural practices surrounding gender and punishment, and the current expansion of corrections into the 'prison-industrial complex'. The next section examines the dominant or subservient roles that men play in prison and the connections between this hierarchy and male violence. Another section looks at the spectrum of intimate relationships behind bars, from rape to friendship, and another at physical and mental health. The last section is about efforts to reform prisons and prison masculinities, including support groups for men. It features an essay about prospects for post-release success in the community written by a man who, after doing time in Soledad and San Quentin, went on to get a doctorate in counseling.The contributions from prisoners include an essay on enforced celibacy by Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as fiction and poetry on prison health policy, violence, and intimacy. The creative contributions were selected from the more than 200 submissions received from prisoners. Author note: Don Sabo, Professor of Social Sciences at D'Youville College in Buffalo, is author or editor of five books, most recently, with David Gordon, "Men's Health and Illness: Gender, Power, and the Body" and, with Michael Messner, "Sex, Violence, and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity". Sabo has appeared on "The Today Show", "Oprah", and "Donahue". Terry A. Kupers, M.D., a psychiatrist, teaches at the Wright Institute in Berkeley. He is the author of four books, editor of a fifth. His latest books are "Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It" and "Revisioning Men's Lives: Gender, Intimacy, and Power". Kupers has served as an expert witness in more than a dozen cases on conditions of confinement and mental health services. Willie London, a published poet, is General Editor of the prison publication "Elite Expressions".He is currently an inmate at Eastern Corrections. For nine years he was a prisoner at Attica.

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By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a distinctive book about race and, in particular, the failures of integration in the United States. American University communications professors Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown document and discuss black-white relations, drawing upon social science scholarship, the media and popular culture, and their own personal experiences. The authors talk about integration and segregation not only in schools and the workplace, but also in worship, leisure, and recreational pursuits. In doing so, they provide a well-rounded but perhaps even more dismal assessment (than others) of the failures of formal, legal efforts to achieve both equality and integration.
Drawing upon their varied professional experiences, they argue that the media has helped to foster an illusion of integration. In particular, they point to the typically diverse casting of on-air television news reporters at the national and local level that suggest an interpersonal racial ease only rarely achieved. The more common view, they argue, is a society where black and white people may work together [if mostly on unequal terms], but then pass each other like ships in the night on the way home to neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly white or black. Their analysis is especially significant for large northeastern and midwestern cities, where black-white relations mostly define the race landscape.
In the end, this book challenges scholars and citizens alike to reflect honestly on our values, our residential choices, and personal practices, not just on rhetoric. Steinhorn and Diggs-Brown show us that a commitment to integration requires hard work and difficult choices, both at the personal and community levels, in ways that national rhetoric about race misses.

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It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered Review

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"It's Not About the Truth" by the former head coach of the Duke lacrosse team, Mike Pressler, is an engrossing and enlightening read.
I thought that I had paid attention throughout the process, and still learned a great deal and picked up some keen insights.
The book chronicles the events from the phone call to escort service up to declaration of "innocent" and the start of the 2007 lacrosse season.
Major and bit players in the drama are profiled and their actions recounted in a documentary/narrative style that is easy to follow and comprehend.
The University bureaucrats (starting with President Brodhead) showed no profiles in courage and abandoned the team, its season and Coach Pressler in a show of politically correct CYA.
The AD is revealed as a cowardly marionette whose word was not his bond.
The 88 faculty members (20% of the Duke staff) who took out a full-page "social disaster" ad in the student newspaper openly flew their agenda flag. A huge rush to judgment before the facts were known.
As egregiously as the university acted in forsaking the team and coach, the actions of the DA (Mike Nifong) and the Durham PD were enough to prompt two ethics charges from the North Carolina State Bar. Trial starts this week.
Nifong's rush to judgment was motivated by his desire to be elected in the 2006 DA race.
The book points out that he never spoke to the escort (complainant) until about eight months after the supposed incident.
The book does show where the profiles in courage reside.
Ironically, it is James Ammons (Chancellor at the historically black college NCCU), who was the initial public voice of reason...being the first to say "don't rush to judgment."
Coach Pressler and his family proved to be a rock of stability in all the turmoil for the team. After speaking with the Senior Captains, he knew they were speaking the truth...and never wavered in this belief.
While the AD was not supportive, the other coaches were loyal to the lacrosse team.
The legal team was incredible. Joseph Chesire V said he knew after three minutes that Dave Evans was telling the truth, and proceeded accordingly.
The members of the team and their parents are the real heroes. The anguish and anxiety they all suffered waiting for the third indictment had to be excruciating. Lives were turned upside down for over a year.
They banded together and never lost faith in one another. That not one underclassman transferred showed a great leap of faith to a university that did not show the same loyalty.
It took a lot of bravery, trust and faith for the parents to send their sons back to Duke.
"The Truth" kept their resolve intact.
Anyone who saw the address Dave Evans gave on May 15, 2006 knew he was speaking from the heart and meant every word he said. It was a powerful moment.
If you watched him speak and did not know he was truthful you should not play poker, as every tell was there.
There are some of us who never vacillated in believing in the innocence of the team. I still feel apologies are owed by many to Coach Pressler, the defendants, the team and the parents.


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Mike Pressler walked into the bottomfloor meeting room of the Murray Building and, as he had done hundreds of times over a sixteen-year career at Duke University, prepared to address his men's lacrosse team. Forty-six players sat in theater-style chairs, all eyes riveted forward. It was 4:35 P.M. on Wednesday, April 5, 2006. The program's darkest hour had arrived in an unexpected and explosive announcement. Pressler, a three-time ACC Coach of the Year, informed his team that its season was canceled and he had "resigned," effective immediately. While his words reverberated off the walls, hysteria erupted. Players cried, confused over a course of events that had spun wildly out of control. What began as an off-campus team party with two hired strippers had accelerated into a rape investigation -- one that exposed prosecutorial misconduct, shoddy police work, an administration's rush to judgment, and the media's disregard for the facts -- dividing both a prestigious university and the city of Durham. Wiping away tears, Pressler demonstrated the steely resolve that helped him win more than two hundred games. For the next thirty minutes, Pressler put his personal situation aside and encouraged his players to stick together. He also made a bold promise: "One day, we will get a chance to tell the world the truth. One day." This is that day. Pressler, who has not done an interview since the saga began, has handed his private diary from those three weeks to New York Times bestselling author Don Yaeger, exposing vivid details, including the day Pressler was fired, when the coach asked Athletic Director Joe Alleva why the school "wasn't willing to wait for the truth" to come out. "It's not about the truth anymore," Alleva said to the coach in a signature moment that said it all. In addition to Pressler, Yaeger interviewed more than seventy-five key figures intimately involved in the case. The result is a tale that defies logic. "It is tough to be one of fifty people who believed a story when fifty million people believed something else," Pressler said. "This wasn't about the truth to many of the others involved. My story is all about the truth."

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