Speaker 1: Over a decade ago, Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow opened a lot of people's eyes to mass incarceration as a failing of social justice. Today we're rebroadcasting an entire hour from 2020 looking at the state of mass incarceration. I'm joined by Kai Wright, the host of WNYC's program The United States of Anxiety. Kai, a while ago you spoke with the writer and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts. How do you guys know each other?

Kai Wright: Well, we met while I was making a previous podcast called Caught, which was a look at the juvenile justice system through the lens of the kids in it. Dwayne really walked us through that system together.

Speaker 1: What was his story?

Kai Wright: At age 16 in Maryland, he went with a group of friends to a mall. A guy came out of a mall, got in his car and they put a gun to his temple and carjacked him. Dwayne tells the story that he decided to hold the gun because he was scared what would happen if somebody else had it, but he nonetheless put the gun to this guy's temple and they got caught and he was locked up for nine years, many of it spent in solitary confinement.

Speaker 1: What happened when he got out?

Kai Wright: Well, he got out, he became a lawyer. That was itself a journey because he has a criminal conviction and that was something that he had to overcome in order to pass the bar and be admitted in Connecticut and he became an author, a very celebrated author. He wrote a memoir and a number of books of poetry. Most recently he has published a book called Felon. I sat down with Reginald Dwayne Betts. We started with him reading a poem called Essay on Reentry. In this poem, he's telling his young son about his past and admitting that he'd been in prison.

Reginald Dwayne Betts: Essay on Reenrty

At two a.m., without enough spirits

spilling into my liver to know

to keep my mouth shut, my youngest

learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,

a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,

but History: I robbed a man. This, months

before he would drop bucket after bucket

on opposing players, the entire bedraggled

bunch five & six & he leaping as if

every lay-up erases something. That’s how

I saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating

presence recompense for the pen. My father

has never seen me play ball is part of this.

My oldest knew, told of my crimes by

a stranger. Tell me we aren’t running

towards failure is what I want to ask my sons,

but it is two in the a.m. The oldest has gone off

to dream in the comfort of his room, the youngest

despite him seeming more lucid than me,

just reflects cartoons back from his eyes.

So when he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know

what’s happening is some straggling angel,

lost from his pack finding a way to fulfill his

duty, lending words to this kid who crawls

into my arms, wanting, more than stories

of my prison, the sleep that he fought while

I held court at a bar with men who knew

that when the drinking was done,

the drinking wouldn’t make the stories

we brought home any easier to tell.

Kai Wright: Can you tell me about that conversation? What was this poem about?

Reginald Dwayne Betts: It was wild. I don't think I ever told anybody this story. A few months before, the summertime before I got admitted to the bar, I was on the phone talking to somebody that was locked up and my youngest son heard me say something or something. He came down he was like, "Did you just say you was in jail?" Like, "No, I didn't just say that.' I had absolutely just said that.

Kai Wright: Because you had kept it from him?

Reginald Dwayne Betts: I had kept it from him, but I guess I don't even think I had said that, but I said something that allowed him to infer that I had been locked up. I finally get admitted to the bar. After I get sworn in I turn around, I look at my mom, my wife is there. My sons are there. My grandmother's there, my uncle's there. My aunt is there, like the same people who were in court when I got I sentenced were there. I said, "The last time I was in a court like this, I was sentenced to nine years in prison."

My youngest son gets up, sits on his brother's lap, whispers something in his head. I'm like, "Oh damn." [chuckles] I really just told him. Afterwards, we had a party, but I stayed out late though. I probably came in two in the morning. Then in this poem is what happens next.

Kai Wright: Why had you been reluctant to tell him in the first place?

Reginald Dwayne Betts: When do you introduce that knowledge to somebody? My oldest, Mackay, he once told me, "Dad, you know I'm not like my classmates," and I was thinking, "Shit, why not? I got a Yale Law degree. [laughs] I don't understand what you mean'. I was like, "Your mama got an advanced degree too." I'm like, "What are you talking about? We some degree Black folks. What do you mean you not like your classmates?" He was like, "Well, they didn't have to learn when they were five that their dad went to jail." This is my oldest. I just hadn't thought about the fact that that was a, I won't say I'm naive really to be like I hadn't thought about the fact that that was a thing because I knew it was a thing when it happened.

He was crying and I had to talk to him, and that's why I was reluctant. I thought I might be able to save my youngest son something, I don't know. I might get pardoned or something. I might hold off until something happens that makes it more palatable. You don't ever want your children to feel bad for you. That isn't what you in the world for. You're not in the world to hurt for me. I'm good. I'm supposed to help deal with whatever pain that you have to experience in this world. I'm supposed to protect you from all of that pain. I'm not supposed to add to it in this way.

Kai Wright: Well your record almost kept you from becoming a lawyer in Connecticut. I wonder if you can tell me about that. You got a letter from the Connecticut bar examining committee that said you had to prove your "good character" before you could be admitted.

Reginald Dwayne Betts: It's wild too, man. It's like I had to prove my character and fitness and that was one of the struggles, but also the struggle was just recognizing, again, I'm being reminded that, I don't care how fast you run, you're not going to outpace the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction and you will not run fast enough where that thing won't still be in your orbit. That's what it reminded me of. It also reminded me of something else, made me aware of something else that I had to get these letters. You get letters from friends and it was a blessing to get all these letters because they show how many people supported me, but it was tragic to feel like they had to put all of that on display for a body that should have admitted me on GP.

It makes me think about what does it mean if you, because I'm gregarious, I'm loud, I'm in the mix, but what if I was a introvert introvert? I'm an introvert extrovert, but what if I was lan introvert introvert? I didn't make these friendships, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't know how to. What would it have meant if I hadn't written four books, because I could say I hadn't been hiding from prison. Look, I just wrote all these books about it. What if I hadn't necessarily been hiding, but I just didn't want to make my life a long conversation about incarceration? I might not have gotten admitted. That is--

Kai Wright: You shouldn't have to be exceptional.

Reginald Dwayne Betts: Well I don't know if I'm exceptional, but right, you shouldn't have to be exceptional. I'm decent. I got a nice jump shot, but-- [laughs]

Kai Wright: It's hard to avoid a sense of, hopelessness I guess isn't really the word, but it feels a little hopeless in some of these poems. They're such heavy circumstances and I know that's quite the opposite of how you feel about the work. How do we deal with the grim reality of this emotionally? Thinking about the future and how we move forward?

Reginald Dwayne Betts: Well, I would first though argue that maybe it's not as hopeless as like even Essay on Reentry. I'm there, you got a poem at which the speaker is a father who's grappling with telling his child that he was incarcerated, but the speaker's also a coach. The speaker's also figuring out ways to talk to his son about this really difficult thing. The speaker's actually thinking that it matters and clearly he had some friends who he could talk to. Even the one about bail denied. I still think a poem that centers a mother's pain that says this mother is watching this right.

She said, "I'm going to be a voice of protest in this moment," it's actually also something hopeful because when I got locked up, people weren't even having this conversation. I know that when I got locked up in the era of 16 year old teenagers, 15 year old kids, 17 year old kids being called super predator, there was nobody. Bernie Sanders could say whatever he want about what he felt about the crime bill, but I will say that nobody was standing up and saying, "Listen, this is my child. This is somebody in my community. Yes we need to deal with violence and we to address violence, but you will not talk about my children this way."

I feel like these poems try to point those things out. I think that that's the hopefulness. I think that these poems are a series of occasions in which you got a man trying to figure out how to save himself. It's a collection of these men telling these stories and to say that, "I am somebody here and I deserve to be seen."

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Kai Wright: Dwayne, thank you for this collection and for your work.

Reginald Dwayne Betts: Thank you man. I appreciate it. It's cool.

Speaker 1: Reginald Dwayne Betts talking with WNYC's Kai Wright early last year. Betts' collection of poems is called Felon. You can hear him read another poem called On Voting for Barack Obama in a Nat Turner T Shirt at newyorkerradio.org.

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