The Prison of Manhood Can’t Hold Shaka Senghor
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2022
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
He went to prison at age 19. When released, he had to learn how to be a father to two Black sons with very different life experiences. His letters to them have lessons for us all.
Read more from Shaka Senghor in his book, Letters to the Sons of Society: A Father's Invitation to Love, Honesty, and Freedom, available now. Audio included in the episode excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio, read by Shaka Senghor.
Companion listening for this episode:
Jason Reynolds Needs to Be Useful (7/18/2022)
The YA author talks about his successes, fears, and his new podcast that explores his relationship with his mother.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, so I get asked this question a lot, and now I forget out in 2027, I got sentenced |
| 0:08.0 | to 14 years for a manslaughter, but before you judge me, just know that this has started |
| 0:14.3 | behind it. |
| 0:15.3 | So, currently I've been incarcerated for nine years, and one thing I can tell you for sure, |
| 0:19.6 | this is not where you want to be. |
| 0:21.6 | The one thing that was the hardest adjustment was food preferences, because see, I had |
| 0:27.4 | been locked up 21 years, so I'd only been eating prison food for that long, so when I |
| 0:32.4 | came home and I would, people would take me to these different restaurants, and they |
| 0:35.6 | would ask me, what do I want, and it's like, I really don't know what I want, because |
| 0:39.2 | I don't know how anything tastes anymore. |
| 0:41.9 | Jail Sugs, don't go to jail, don't be doing stuff you're not supposed to, so now I'm |
| 0:47.2 | trying to keep a legit. |
| 0:58.4 | This is the United States of anxiety, I'm Kai Wright, and welcome to the show. |
| 1:03.0 | Shaka Sengor is a best-selling author and speaker who's drawn a lot of attention for telling |
| 1:08.3 | his life story. |
| 1:09.9 | He's been with Oprah, he's been with Barack Obama, he's been on the Breakfast Club and |
| 1:14.0 | Primetime TV shows, and often the focus is on his story of redemption. |
| 1:19.8 | Somebody who's spent nearly 20 years in prison for a deadly violent crime, and somebody who's |
| 1:25.4 | turned his life around as the saying goes, we've wanted to talk to him on this show for |
| 1:29.9 | a while, but I think that framing, that redemption story, it's a much too reductive way to understand |
| 1:36.0 | the work Shaka Sengor is doing. |
| 1:38.3 | His work is really about mental and emotional health for all of us, how we find what we need |
... |
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