Shownotes Transcript
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads). His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out") won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There).
“I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you say you're a writer, if you know nothing else, then you know that you read. You pay attention to the world. … And prison became the metaphor by which I understood the world and poetry became the medium by which I understood what it meant to write about the world and what it meant to take seriously the responsibility to write about the world that I knew.”
Show notes:
01:00 Almost There with Dwayne Betts) (Emerson Collective)
05:00 The Black Poets) (Dudley Randall • Bantam • 1985)
10:00 Married… with Children) (Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt • Fox • 1987-1997)
21:00 "Scientists and Engineers") (Killer Mike • Michael • 2023)
24:00 "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out") (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2018)
26:00 "The Language of Birds") (Anselm Kiefer • 2018)
28:00 A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison) (Avery • 2010)
32:00 "Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me") (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2020)
33:00 Shahid Reads His Own Palm) (Alice James Books • 2010)
33:00 Bastards of the Reagan Era) (Four Way Books • 2015)
33:00 Felon) (Norton • 2019)
33:00 Redaction: A Project by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts) (MoMA PS1 • 2019)
33:00 Redaction) (Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts • Norton • 2023)
44:00 Creative Nonfiction)
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