A Poet’s Journey Through Incarceration, identity and redemption
PRAISE
PRAISE
Life Inside, Remixed: What 90 Days in Jail Taught a Poet About America
Ravi Shankar was born in D.C. to South Indian parents. But it took going to jail for him to fully understand what many other Americans of color face.
BOOK EXCERPTS
“Whenever I hear that phrase “satisfy the state,” I visualize the fanged Hindu goddess Kali, with her long lolling tongue, flailing multiple arms and necklace of decapitated human heads. I think of a goddess who needs to be propitiated with human sacrifice. I probably make that association because I am a Tamilian Brahmin American whose parents immigrated from South India in the 1960s. Though I was born in Washington, D.C., and I have largely benefited from the very systems of discrimination that I would later suffer, I haven’t always felt like an American.” — THE MARSHALL PROJECT
“My identity crisis goes back to kindergarten in suburban Virginia, where my ponytail-wearing, beatifically smiling teacher, Mr. Fatuma, took me aside one day to praise my precocious reading and inform me that I had a special gift — just like the man I was named for!” — NYT
“Shankar is an absolutely brilliant writer; his prose, finessed from years of writing and teaching the craft of writing, is rhapsodic, punchy, profound, and discursively sound.”—Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian, University of Houston — Clear Lake
"Elegantly wrought and emotionally transparent."—Public Libraries Online
“A story that is by turns moving, horrifying, funny, and provocative. . . . Shankar has a poet’s ear and a journalist’s eye. . . . He magics personalities, places and events onto the page with such vividness that this story compels from the first page to the last.” — Jaivin, Sydney Review of Books
“A candid and often excruciating exposure not only of the protagonist’s inner workings, but those of his real-world mise-en-scène. . . . A fall is a seed for the growth of a via negativa, which only gains by losing, and Shankar’s hard-won words on the page are the telling trace of what has already been shed. We learn to see, as he does, from the reversed view granted in the falling.” — Martin Kovan, Ploughshares
“Through deft characterizations and snippets of inmates’ vernacular, Shankar creates vibrant portraits of his jailmates that are written with tolerance, sympathy, and often affection…Shankar’s honesty and humility render him a sympathetic figure. His elegant prose is strewn with references to philosophy and poetry, helping to make his storytelling compelling—even entertaining. Correctional is the story of a beleaguered man on the road to redemption, trying to set the record straight.”— Foreword Reviews
“Tomorrow is Amma’s seventieth birthday, and I’m wondering what to buy her. She’s told me that the only thing she wants from her children is a new toilet seat, a pair of sensible black shoes, or a replacement floormat for her decade-old Honda Civic. None of these gifts seem particularly appropriate to such a consequential birthday, but then again, Amma has always been practical.” — THE COMMON
I emerge from the caged elevator to the basement of the courthouse where my freedom has officially been surrendered. I’m searched for the first of many times that day by a brisk marshal who pats me down like a furniture appraiser looking for defects in an antique bureau. He confiscates my silk tie, my books and shoelaces, none of which I will ever get back, and leads me into a communal cell that smells of sour milk. I’m about to begin serving my time in jail. — MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
“Through deft characterizations and snippets of inmates’ vernacular, Shankar creates vibrant portraits of his jailmates that are written with tolerance, sympathy, and often affection…Shankar’s honesty and humility render him a sympathetic figure. His elegant prose is strewn with references to philosophy and poetry, helping to make his storytelling compelling—even entertaining. Correctional is the story of a beleaguered man on the road to redemption, trying to set the record straight.” — Foreword Reviews
“A brave voyage of discovery, Correctional is a real odyssey, barely making it home after navigating treacherous cultural and psychological waters. Thanks to Shankar’s brilliant writing and admirable honesty, we relive his harrowing, but eventually inspiring, personal saga. And his deep insights into our justice system are alone worth the price of admission.” — H. Bruce Franklin, author of Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War
“The most admirable quality of this memoir is its unvarnished honesty. . . . Correctional by poet Ravi Shankar is a challenging, thought provoking, and profound examination of both the poet himself as well as the criminal justice system. Few writers would have the courage to expose themselves in such a nakedly honest way as Shankar does. Ravi Shankar makes no excuses for his own human weaknesses while also exposing the defects imbedded within the American criminal justice and incarceration systems and the overt racism rooted within these institutions.”—Beltway Poetry Quarterly