Shame Is Ever-Present When You’re Sitting in a Cell

It’s 2015. Sitting in a single-man cell, the toilet approximately three feet from my bed, I surf through the few TV channels available to me until I find a show that can force laughter out of me. Mostly, I watch family sitcoms to feel at home. Sometimes I even imagine that I’m in a plotline, as a distant cousin with a dangerous past. The father sits me down and advises me to change.

In real life, I was kicked out of my house at 14. I started selling crack from an abandoned loft, wondering—in between collecting crinkled-up cash—how I could get my mother to love me.

Sighing through the commercial breaks, I flip to the local news where a Black woman in a pink dress reports the weather. The forecaster is talking about how her grandmother was one of the few African