The Soul Knows No Bars, written by a philosophy professor and a group of inmates at the Maryland Penitentiary, is a book that works on a multitude of levels. If you want to understand what happens in the lives of inmates in a men’s maximum-security prison, you are offered the wisdom of its resident sages. If you want to witness effective teaching and engaged learning, connecting profound ideas with deeply personal realities, just read. If you are interested in how service can work without demeaning the “recipients,” you can observe it happening on the farthest fringes of social control and neglect. If you want to understand how to make writing lively and stimulating and evocative, Drew Leder’s saga of philosophy professor meeting murderers, drug dealers and rapists, can help with that too.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric