Letters to an Incarcerated Brother: Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones

by Hill Harper

  In your letter you talk about your “bad luck.” You chalk up your arrest to “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Maybe so. But these prison success stories I’m telling you about didn’t really have anything to do with luck. “Being in the right place at the right time” did not turn around these people’s lives. None of their good fortune happened to them. No magic dust was sprinkled on them, they didn’t win the lotto, and no one gave them the hookup. They made it happen. They accomplished such stunning life changes and subsequent victories because they never gave up on the idea that they had a right to be unreasonably happy. They knew and believed that they had that right and the ability to create their own lives.

  These future giants of music, sports, business, journalism, and education understood that no matter where you end up, it doesn’t have to be the absolute determinant of your ultimate fulfillment. Somehow they learned that hope and belief are all you need to move toward any goal. Hope is a uniquely human quality that is the powerful necessary precursor to belief. Why? Because even for the most hardened and cynical, hope gives us the right attitude to be able to believe again. And belief is something that we all carry with us. Sometimes it feels scary to believe in ourselves because none of us want to be hurt by taking a chance, and those old habitual voices of doubt start to creep in and push us back toward our old way of being and old beliefs. But the more you substitute new beliefs, new thoughts, new ideas, new plans, the easier believing becomes. In many ways, belief is like a muscle. You know when you’re lifting weights and you first start training a body part? That muscle is small and weak, and you lift the light weights tentatively. But the more you train it, the stronger it becomes, and the weight you used to struggle with becomes so easy to lift that you use it as your warm-up weight. You can throw it around. The same holds true for belief. It’s a muscle that we must build and train. We can build our belief muscles by using affirmations, small words or phrases that reiterate our trust in ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, I stick these words up on mirrors and my dashboard. Try coming up with a few of your own, like:

  Even for the most hardened and cynical, hope gives us the right attitude to be able to believe again.

  I can do whatever I set my mind to.

  I am able to turn things around.

  I can have a new attitude about my future.

  In your letter, you went into some detail about the deprivations of jail. It’s sad to hear that there isn’t even a library in the temporary holding place where you are. But that missing library is part of one of the prison’s most powerful tools. Everyone in the prison system is forced into living in “jail time,” a time of deprivation, and that includes even the corrections officers. I just called your jail and was informed that I’m not allowed to send you more than one book a month. There’s no reason for it except as a means of deprivation. The poison of deprivation is inside the head of that female guard you told me frisks your aunt and treats her rudely on those few times she comes to visit. It’s in the lousy food they give you, which you tell me is close to indigestible. But there’s an antidote to all that poison, and it works every time.

  BELIEF IS YOUR INEXHAUSTIBLE ALTERNATIVE POWER

  Your belief is the thing that can’t be poisoned by “jail time.” No one—including the guards—can destroy it. Belief in oneself is an inexhaustible source of power that is accessible to all of us, no matter what our circumstances. Psychology teaches us that if you tell a person that they are stupid, they will do worse on a test than if you said nothing. If you tell someone that they are a criminal, they are more likely to commit a crime. But the inverse is true as well. If you tell someone that they are smart, the same person does better on the test. So the most important thing is what you actually believe yourself to be. Saying you will never amount to anything is the perfect way to guarantee that you will never amount to anything.

  Your belief is the thing that can’t be poisoned by “jail time.”

  Your current situation is convincing you what to believe, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Are you willing to be courageous and vulnerable enough to believe the truth—that you will do great, positive things in this world? The power of belief is waiting inside you like a hidden treasure. All you need to learn is how to access it. What will you use the power for? Will you use it to envision a new future? Once you surrender to belief, nothing can stop you from building a happy life that is specific to you. You can even build that life within those prison walls. As you do, your belief in it will create a kind of momentum that permeates everything you decide to do, every step you take. I believe in you, and that belief gets stronger every day.

  Once you surrender to belief, nothing can stop you from building a happy life that is specific to you.

  Hit me back, Brotha.

  Peace,

  Hill

  P.S. Oh, I almost forgot. I told my man Lemon Andersen, an amazing spoken-word artist who has written and performed award-winning one-man shows and off-Broadway plays. I consider him a true genius. For a period of his life he was in and out of the pen, and he also did a five-year bid before overcoming that life and carving his own path. I told him about you and asked him if there is anything he wanted to share with you. I slipped what he wrote me into this letter. Enjoy his wisdom and flow.

  DOPE BOY FRESH

  Dope boy fresh.

  Mr. Manager, lookout.

  Pusher-man on the street

  Momma ain’t around, so how else I’m going to eat?

  Puts me in his Lexus, plush leather seats, tells me

  “Forget food, these crack vials could put Jordans on your feet.”

  I take a couple bundles on the humble

  a few bombs on the arm

  figure selling poison to my neighbors won’t do me no harm

  and that was the beginning, then it was all about winning

  and living like what I’m doing ain’t nowhere near sinning

  this money is making me devilish and all about self

  yeah I’m selling to my man’s moms

  cause if she don’t get it from me

  she gonna get it from someone else.

  And I become heartless and Godless,

  regardless of what the old folks in my hood thought

  so what, I’m selling what killed my mother?

  She was her own grown woman

  with her own free will, that’s not my fault

  and you might not like me

  but these Nikes make me feel so loved

  wonder what happens when I give this hustle

  a little more push and a whole lot more shove

  probably make Ph.D. loot without having a degree.

  My girl’s stressing for my time

  but what can she do that this paper can’t do for me?

  Tell her my mind is on that dollar sign, yo

  girl, live your life, don’t bother mine, sho’

  nuff you want time, whoa

  love is love, but holler baby wait on line

  go tell your mom that your love losing manners

  to this blow mixed with Arm & Hammer

  it’s the next best living,

  and if she don’t understand ghetto grammar

  tell her the new nine-to-five is

  cocaine mixed with baking soda

  the new payola,

  drawing funds out of packages

  the new Crayola.

  Her eyes stay bloodshot

  from my long nights on the block

  praying a lot that I don’t get knocked,

  or fall blood, braaaaattt, to the gunshot

  she can’t sleep cause of all the mercies,

  she mercies me.

  I tell her to,

  “Just Chill, I got something special

  for our second anniversary.”
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  But it lands on the fifteenth of the month

  which means a guaranteed G-stack

  so that night I tell her that I gotta make a run,

  “Baby Girl, I’ll be’s back,” but she don’t believes that

  copping to me a . . .

  “Please, that, like tonight, like, something ain’t right.

  Like, my heart don’t needs that, like we don’t, like,

  need money, like, I don’t even care.

  Like, why don’t we just go upstairs?

  Like my father has some beers, like,

  I will let you run an iron, straighten the curlers out my hair.

  Like, if I really mean something to you,

  then, like, baby don’t go nowhere.”

  Thinking love or the money?

  Money or the love?

  Should I go straight with my life,

  or should I go straight thug?

  Love or the money?

  Money or the love?

  Should I be living like how I’m living

  or should I stop pushing dem drugs?

  Answer: money might always get spent,

  but love don’t always pay the rent.

  So I’m bent on making this dollar,

  even though it don’t make any cents.

  “Like he never, like, even listen to me that night he got caught, like, I knew that what we had was history.”

  What pisses me, is that I’m in jail, you should hold me down.

  “Like I’m only sixteen, like, how long am I supposed to stay around?”

  Yeah, but you’re supposed to be all the way in it, you know, to win it.

  “Like remember one thing, like, I was always in it, but the love, like, that I wanted, like, you was never, like, really with it.”

  Forget you then. I don’t even see you being my spouse.

  “Like, I never thought, like, I’d be saying it’s over, like, let alone in a courthouse.”

  So it’s over?

  “Like, over.”

  Over, over?

  “Like, over, like, over.”

  Then let me go back to my cell and cry on my own shoulder.

  BELIEVE

  LETTER FROM A LOCKED-UP BROTHER

  LETTER 4

  Whose Life Is It?

  The Stigma of the Incarcerated

  No man is a prisoner and nothing else.

  —Archbishop William Temple

  The only thing I want to know is what you are going to do next.

  —Robert Griffin III

  Hey, man,

  How are you? I’m on layover for a flight to Iowa from Atlanta, where I’m shooting a film. I’ve been campaigning for President Obama in Iowa. It’s considered a swing state, which means it could swing either way in the election. And since the Electoral College determines who becomes president, each vote is especially critical in a swing state. I think one of the things that make our country great is that it’s a participatory democracy. But that only works if we the people participate (or are allowed to).

  I think it’s truly shameful that in many states, ex-felons are prevented from voting and participating in their fundamental democratic right. Once someone has served time (paid their debt) and is released from incarceration and paroled, he should be able to participate in the democratic process.

  While in Iowa, I figured I’d pay a surprise visit to a great-uncle who means a lot to me and just had heart bypass surgery. There were no direct flights to Fort Madison, Iowa, where he lives, so I opted for changing planes in Memphis. Not a great idea, because somehow a forty-five-minute layover has stretched into almost three hours.

  I suppose there’s a lesson in that. The path from one place to another often isn’t always a straight line. We may believe it’s going to be simple—from here to there—but we end up with unforeseen detours and unanticipated delays. Even so, we hold up by keeping our destination in mind. And some of those detours even bring us benefits, such as the chance my layover just provided for me to write to you. Sorry to hear about that letter you got from your aunt. But what makes you think she’s conning you by saying she’s had to change jobs? That her new schedule won’t let her come up for visiting hours for several months? I don’t know your aunt, of course, but a three-page letter seems like an awful lot of trouble just to put over a lie. Why don’t you take her at her word and write her back? Tell her honestly about your disappointment at not being able to see her.

  We all want to be innocent until proven guilty. Sometimes we have to learn to give people the benefit of the doubt. And if they don’t live up to that “benefit,” then so be it.

  IT STARTS NOW

  In your letter to me, you also told me how depressed you were by what I wrote about the prison industrial complex and our country’s exploitive prison system. I get it. Jail is like a friend who always asks you to listen to his music—it’s wack, but what’s the point of saying it? You go on and on about the same thing. Being there unjustly. Over and over, you keep pointing out that you were “framed.” I’m sorry, really I am. However, I can’t hold back what I’m thinking any longer. The only answer I have for you about all that is: Whateva, bruh!

  Because whether you were framed or not, you’re still there! It’s still your life! And you still have choices!

  I don’t even need to know any more details about the circumstances of your arrest, and I don’t care. The only thing you and I have for certain is right now . . . and we are where we are. If you don’t forget about your regretful past, you’ll keep on reliving it. It’s not like you drown by falling in the water—you drown by staying there. And your ass seems to wanna stay.

  All I need to know—all you need to know—is how you can make a break with the past and start plans for a new life today. The most underrated moment is now. “Someday” isn’t even on the calendar.

  The most underrated moment is now. “Someday” isn’t even on the calendar.

  A couple letters ago, when I tried to explain the importance of surrendering to your experience, you wisecracked back, “What kind of game you telling me to learn, Mr. Hill Harper?” My answer to that is, “No game at all.” In fact, I’m telling you not to play the prison game, not to play by its self-defeating rules, not to participate in its atmosphere of fear and negativity, not to participate in its methods of setting one prisoner against another—when you should all be thinking of yourselves as Brothers, people who are in the same boat. The prison industry is profiting from your mistakes and wants you to repeat them. You’ve talked to me a lot about wanting to design games. Well, those are the only rules of the prison game. They’re designed to get you caught up, get you stuck, and make you lose. Be in it but not of it—be above it. When Nelson Mandela was in prison for twenty-seven years, he never allowed himself to fall victim to the prison mentality. He rose above it for the entire time. And don’t try to tell me it’s impossible to be simultaneously “in it” and “above it.” You can do it!

  CHOICES

  Did you check out the Sidney Poitier book I sent you? After I mailed it, there was nothing left on my night table to read. So when I first got to Atlanta for the movie I was making, I made a quick run to my favorite bookstore down there, Shrine of the Black Madonna, to get something new to read, and somehow I ended up mentioning to one of the clerks that I’m trading letters with a young Brother who’s incarcerated. What do you think she did? She led me straight to this book called The Other Wes Moore and said I have to read it.1

  I took her word for it and bought the book, and I have to say it did blow my mind. Wes Moore, the author, was an ex-military officer about to become a Rhodes Scholar at the time of its writing. Just by chance, he happened to read a bunch of articles in The Baltimore Sun about these cats who broke into a jewelry store and ended up killing an off-duty policeman. One of them had a name that caught
Wes Moore’s attention—his name was Wes Moore, too.

  Not only did the two guys have the same name, but they were the same age. Both of them were from Baltimore. Both had spent part of their childhood in the Bronx. Both were from single-parent families. Yet one was about to become a Rhodes Scholar. The other was being sent up to do life for murder. Why?

  Out of curiosity, the Wes Moore (WM) who went on to write the book started visiting the incarcerated Wes Moore. How, he wanted to know, had such similar paths suddenly taken such different directions? Once the two got to know each other, they discovered that they had even more in common. Both had hated school. Both had hit the streets at an early age. Both had grown up in neighborhoods where it seemed the only chance for community was in gangs. Both had had early run-ins with the cops.

  Gradually, WM learned the facts. They’re complicated: The twists and turns of each path narrowly kept one Wes out of trouble and just as narrowly kept the other Wes from avoiding problems. WM thought that being sent away to military school was the thing that saved him. But the incarcerated Wes came close to being saved, too. He came within a hair’s breadth of leaving the drug trade because of a training program called Job Corps. By the time that happened, however, he was already in deep shit. While WM was in military school, Wes Moore was fathering children he couldn’t take care of. While WM was graduating, Wes Moore was experimenting with drugs. By the time WM was in the army, Wes Moore was making the drug trade his profession. So by the time he had a chance to join the Job Corps, his options had shrunk, because he’d already done time and been labeled a felon. Even so, he still had two choices: Job Corps or his old life on the street. Why, then, did he choose to hit the streets again and walk down that familiar pavement to get back on the road to the Big House? For the Wes Moore who’d write the book, a single event was enough to set him down a different sidewalk and a whole series of chain reactions that paved a road toward success. That doesn’t mean when the going got difficult, he couldn’t have run away from the discipline of military school as “any homie who’d been on the streets would be expected to do.” But instead, he decided to take the ball and run with it—first into education, then into an army career, and finally into a life as a scholar. As far as he knows, he built a successful life on a single chance: military school. But to me the genius of his story is not about military school. It’s about his taking dramatic, decisive actions to break away from the hamster wheel that his life and upbringing were trying to keep him on. Believe me when I say, man, if he could do that, you can, too.