Nothing Has Made Me Feel More American Than Going to Jail I was born in D.C. to South Indian parents. But it wasn’t until I had to negotiate the criminal justice system that I fully realized what many Americans of color have to deal with. Manuja Waldia for The Marshall Project By Ravi Shankar Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system. Sign up to receive Life Inside emailed to you every week.
Hartford Correctional Center (HCC) is located on an urban stretch near car dealerships, fast-food restaurants, a seedy-looking motel and an enormous post office. Driving by, you might not even notice it, except for the glinting barbed wire encircling the grounds.
In Eloghosa Osunde’s new column, Melting Clocks, she takes apart the surreality of time and the senses.
My memory of my childhood is a black hole, save for the moments and ages marked by revelations and miracles. Take age six for instance, the year I learned to call things that are not (yet) as though they are (already.) It’s a biblical lesson, this, and my brothers were born from inside it, after years of waiting. Leaning on those words from the mouth of my mother, I prayed nightly for twin siblings, and soon started to talk about them like I knew them already. In a sense, I did. One, because they were real before their bodies were formed, and two, because my requests were already cool wax on the inside of God’s ear. I was taught things about holding hope unswervingly, about manifesting with laser focus, and the veracity of those lessons raised the hairs on the back of my neck even when there was no one there. I sealed prayers with