Books

`Keep Your Hustle, But Change Your Product’

THE AFRO — Author Lamont Carey’s latest book, The Transition: From One Hellhole to Another, continues his searing narrative about the perils of mass incarceration, which impacts millions of Americans on both sides of the wall.

Published

6 years ago

January 5, 2019

Oakland Post

By Sean Yoes

Author Lamont Carey’s latest book, The Transition: From One Hellhole to Another, continues his searing narrative about the perils of mass incarceration, which impacts millions of Americans on both sides of the wall.

Although Carey, a native of Washington, D.C. crafts fictionalized stories about life in prison, they are born of his very real experience as a young Black man who was once caught up in perhaps the most vicious system of incarceration on the planet.

“I was in prison, to keep…from being bored, I use to jump in rap battles and one of the guys challenged me to write a book, because he said I couldn’t battle,” said Carey during a phone interview. “And I wrote the book and I started being the institution favorite, everybody wanted to read the book. So, I kept writing books.”

All of Carey’s books (The Transition is his seventh), give readers an intimate and ultimately authentic immersion into life in prison. “So, the books that I released are a guy’s journey through one of the worst prisons in the world. So, you get to see how prison works, how relationships work, how individuals chose to navigate based off of their experiences,” Carey said. But, the author, motivational speaker and filmmaker revealed what he experienced inside the system when he first entered it was nothing like he expected.

“Prison was nothing like I thought it would be. I thought prison would be this constant battle of having to prove myself to protect me from being raped and all of that,” he said.

“But, what prison actually was, well, you had two roads you could take; you could take that road where you live a life of violence and aggression, or you could take the road of programming. And initially, I took the road of violence, but then it was working against me,” Carey added. “I was losing good days and going to the hole. And so, I chose the other path so I could get home. So, people go to prison and sometimes lose sight of freedom and when you lose sight of freedom that’s when you become institutionalized.”

Carey first hit the national stage as a spoken word artist in 2005 on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam.” But, he said he had no expectation of where poetry would take him. “I wasn’t focused on being a change agent, I just was trying to infuse truth into the art, because a lot of people hadn’t come from that background and they were doing poems in the third person, so it wasn’t truth,” he said. “So, I just added, hard…straight from the streets kind of material and that material ended up having an impact because it gave other people, it made them see that their voice was being heard, and that somebody else shared their ideas,” Carey added.

“And so from there I started getting invited to speak in jails and prisons and their communities and so I just latched onto that. Because it gave me the opportunity, all those bad experiences I had this was an opportunity to use them for good. So, I turned my mistakes and roadblocks to success.”

Carey’s journey has taken him from seemingly divergent locations like Ames, Iowa to Africa. But, ultimately his message is universal, especially for people of color.

“There is poverty everywhere, there are Black people everywhere trying to figure out how to come up,” he said.

“There are Black people everywhere that succumb to the barriers. And then when I enter the room and talk about my challenges and how I overcame them, it gives hope.”

This article originally appeared in The Afro.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

Published

8 hours ago

January 2, 2025

Oakland Post

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Activism

‘Resist’ a Look at Black Activism in U.S. Through the Eyes of a Native Nigerian

In 1995, after she and her brothers traveled from their native Nigeria to join their mother at her new home in the South Bronx, young Omokha’s eyes were opened. She quickly understood that the color of her skin – which was “synonymous with endless striving and a pursuit of excellence” in Nigeria – was “so problematic in America.”

Published

4 days ago

December 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Cover of “Resist! How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America.” Courtesy image.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

Throughout history, when decisions were needed, the answer has often been “no.”

‘No,’ certain people don’t get the same education as others. ‘No,’ there is no such thing as equality. ‘No,’ voting can be denied and ‘no,’ the laws are different, depending on the color of one’s skin. And in the new book, “Resist!” by Rita Omokha, ‘no,’ there is not an obedient acceptance of those things.

That became a bigger matter to Omokha later, 15 years after her brother was deported: she “saw” him in George Floyd, and it shook her. Troubled, she traveled to America on a “pilgrimage for understanding [her] Blackness…” She began to think about the “Black young people across America” who hadn’t been or wouldn’t be quiet about racism any longer.

She starts this collection of stories with Ella Josephine Baker, whose parents and grandparents modeled activism and who, because of her own student activism, would be “crowned the mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” Baker, in fact, was the woman who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, in 1960.

Nine teenagers, known as the Scottsboro Nine were wrongly arrested for raping two white women in 1931 and were all released, thanks to the determination of white lawyer-allies who were affiliated with the International Labor Defense and the outrage of students on campuses around America.

Students refused to let a “Gentleman’s Agreement” pass when it came to sports and equality in 1940. Barbara Johns demanded equal education under the law in Virginia in 1951. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. And after Trayvon Martin (2012) and George Floyd (2020) were killed, students used the internet as a new form of fighting for justice.

No doubt, by now, you’ve read a lot of books about activism. There are many of them out there, and they’re pretty hard to miss. With that in mind, there are reasons not to miss “Resist!”

You’ll find the main one by looking between the lines and in each chapter’s opening.

There, Omokha weaves her personal story in with that of activists at different times through the decades, matching her experiences with history and making the whole timeline even more relevant.

In doing so, the point of view she offers – that of a woman who wasn’t totally raised in an atmosphere filled with racism, who wasn’t immersed in it her whole life – lets these historical accounts land with more impact.

This book is for people who love history or a good, short biography, but it’s also excellent reading for anyone who sees a need for protest or action and questions the status quo. If that’s the case, then “Resist!” may be the answer.

“Resist! How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America” by Rita Omokha, c.2024, St. Martin’s Press. $29.00