Month: April 2018

by John Vasquez Sometimes the stress seems unbearable. My younger brother is homeless, and I haven’t seen him in twenty-two years. My mother, who turns sixty this year, is in poor physical health and she must drive three and a half hours just to visit me. Here I am in prison and I can’t do anything about it. I feel powerless to help the people I love, and it stresses me the hell out. I got locked up at sixteen years old and my family has been waiting twenty-five years for me to come home. I’m doing life in prison

by Henry Inocencio I am thirty-eight years old. I have been incarcerated almost fifteen years now. I have a sentence of LWOP (life without parole) plus twenty- five to life for a first-degree murder with drive-by enhancement. I was raised in the Bay Area on the Oakland side of the water. My family was big. Dad’s side was Mexican, mom’s side was white. In the 1980’s life for a kid was fresh and exciting. There was music and break-dancing in the street. All the older people were fun and cool and I gravitated towards those qualities. Then, as if it