I have always been passionate about the idea of working with convicts. I have wanted to be someone who could give them a voice and prove their humanity beyond their life-long label. It is so easy to see the snapshot of a person’s situation and act as though you know it all. It is so easy to see someone thru the lens of their label. I bear the label “Asian” a fact for which I am generally very proud of. But that label has also brought me a lot of negativity. The time someone yelled at me and referring to me as “China”.  My name is not China and I am not Chinese. And, according to commercial dna tests, I have no Chinese blood in me.

Someone can bear the label “sex offender” but people don’t want to know the story. What about the two teenagers who believe themselves in love and have sex. If the girl is just underage and the boy is just over age, that boy could be deemed a sex offender if someone reported him. And he will have that label for the rest of his life, despite the fact that he and the girl go on to get married and have children. People don’t care about that story.

It is easy to see someone who is homeless and turn their nose up. Demand that someone do something, and yet not doing anything themselves. It is easier to just sneer and ask why they aren’t just TRYING. Without considering the mentally ill individual who can’t get their meds and thus can’t stabilize enough to maintain a job. How about fighting for more mental health funding. They don’t consider the huge percentage of veterans who make up the homeless population because they might be too damaged to make it all the way thru the process to get their benefits. We see them begging on the corner and we drive right by. Thank you for your service. Nor do people consider the fact that a lot of veterans feel more comfortable outside in that environment. It feels safer than a home and a bed. They are looked down on despite the fact that that is a life they chose. People don’t consider the young homeless female. They don’t think about how she may have run away from an abusive home, but has no resources outside of the home. Nor do they consider that she is then at a high likelihood of becoming further victimized. They are all just homeless individuals with no story or sympathy, and all the world knows is that they don’t want to see them. “Not in my backyard.”

And, as Angela Davis said in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? prisons have become a dumping zone where individuals who society doesn’t want to acknowledge are put.

My point is, this book spoke to me on astounding levels. It touched my heart. It inspired me. It stoked my fire to keep moving in the direction I am going. Because I want to enter that windowless black hole where people are seen simply as “bad”, and I want to show that they have lives, circumstances, problems, and voices.