Concurrent users
Unlimited
Authorized users
Authorized users
Access notes
DRM-Free
Document Delivery Supplied
Can lend chapters, not whole books
Title
Caged : A Teacher's Journey Through Rikers, or How I Beheaded the Minotaur / Brandon Dean Lamson.
ISBN
9781531502539
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2023]
Copyright
©2023
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (192 p.)
Item Number
10.1515/9781531502539 doi
Summary
An honest and gripping memoir of one man's life-altering experience teaching at Rikers IslandWhen Brandon Dean Lamson first accepted the teaching position at Horizon Academy, a court-mandated academic program for eighteen to twenty-year-old prisoners at Rikers Island, even he had to question his own motivation. Why was he risking his life every day at a prison notorious for being one of the most dangerous places to work? Was it his small way of making amends for the blatant and pervasive racism he witnessed every day growing up in his small southern town? Or was it to prove he wasn't afraid to go where his own father, a prominent District Court Judge, had sent both the innocent and guilty alike? In Caged, Lamson provides an intimate view of his transformative experience teaching inmate students on Rikers Island.Rikers Island resonates as a place of horrific violence and inescapable punishment, one of the last places in America that truly invokes overwhelming, universal fear. Set in the late nineties-a time when the city was rapidly changing into an increasingly corporatized and policed space-Caged exposes a criminal justice system designed to thwart efforts to rehabilitate and educate the incarcerated. Lamson's first-hand account illustrates how penitentiaries too often use prison education as another means of control. Written in a gripping, confessional narrative, Caged explores the consequential impact of Lamson's move to New York City, his childhood experiences with racial justice, and his journey working in four prisons over the course of three years. Lamson provides glimpses into his own self-destructive behavior as parallels emerge between his life on Rikers and his personal life, his white privilege, and how his behavior progressively entraps him in ways that resonate with the challenges faced by his students. The book intimately captures how incarceration changes both prisoner and educator alike as Lamson struggles to integrate into life outside prison after his departure from Horizon Academy.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
Frontmatter
Contents
Part I FALLING
The Weapons Board
Killer Inside
Island Bound
Brujo
Horizon
Queen of Cups
Stray Cats
Burning
Antigone
Hellfire Club
The Seagull
Apollo Kids
Part II THE LABYRINTH
The Minotaur
The Sweet Science
Demon Weed
Windows
Maximum
Solitary
Red, White, and Blue
Native Son
Knockdown
Mistress Evil
Paris and Birdlegs
The Duck Game
Part III SUBMERGED
Devil Mountain
Island Holidays
Redpath
The Cove
Pink Leaves
Strong and White
Yard Blues
Lost Dalí
Hoops
The Voice
Do-Over
Atlantis
Epilogue
Acknowledgments