When I think about my adolescence, subconsciously, I had already prepared myself for incarceration. During my teenage years, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, using drugs, and coming in the house at all hours of the morning. My father was not really present, and when he did come around to see me, I did not feel the love that a son should have felt from a father. My mother did everything humanly possible to ensure me a positive upbringing, but without the significant presence of my father, I turned to the street. I learned from the street, where throughout my neighborhood it was somewhat of a “rite of passage” to have gone to jail, survived, and come home to tell “jail stories.”
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric