Why did I write this book?

Oregon author tells the stories of 6 people coming back to society from prison

By Amy Wang | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Eugene author Lauren Kessler sums up America’s approach to incarceration this way in her new book:

“We want those who have done harm to us to suffer, to pay for what they did,” she writes. “But in making them suffer, we create the kind of human beings we do not want back in our communities.”

Q: “Free” reads like a companion book for “A Grip of Time,” your 2019 book about men serving life sentences. How did you become interested in the subject of incarceration in the first place?

A: My general interest is these hidden subcultures in our midst that are peopled by, in this case, 2.3 million people that we know very little about…

If we have an epidemic of mass incarceration, then we also have the companion crisis of re-entry: 600,000 men and women coming back to our communities. Most of whom want to remake their life; they don’t want to go back. And so I wanted to know what that journey was like.

Q: If readers take away one thing from this book, what would you hope that would be?

A: So these men and women come back to our communities. We need to give them a chance to show us that they can be good citizens and community members. There are thousands in Oregon.

Other great questions include:

Q: Aside from housing and jobs, what facets of re-entry did you focus on and why?

Q: What were your thoughts about victims and their families and how they might respond to this book?

For the rest of the interview please click here.