From time to time in Indieland, we see standout memoirs that reveal what it’s like to be incarcerated by or working within a broken criminal justice system. In each of these three recommended titles, the author has a unique take on spending years inside a prison. Two of the memoirs, both written by formerly incarcerated people, describe the ingenious coping strategies that helped them during their imprisonment and long after they were released. In the third, a career corrections officer documents her experiences as a Black woman rising through the ranks of the California corrections system.

R.G. Shore taught himself to meditate while sitting on his bunk in his cell. He recounts the circumstances of living as a person of color in a nearly all-white penitentiary (he describes himself as a “small little Brown thing, surrounded by large, angry, muscular White men”) in his memoir, The Ocean Inside Me. Shore, who was born in Kolkata, India, adopted by white Christians, and raised in Oregon, began meditating not only to escape the violence around him, but to heal from the lifelong effects of racism. His style of meditation, which gives the book it’s title (he listened to radio static, which transformed into the sound of the ocean), not only helped him endure incarceration, but also gave him a viable career path. Our reviewer notes, “Now free from prison, Shore is a reiki practitioner and energy healer whose work focuses on helping incarcerated people heal from racial and spiritual trauma.”

In his memoir, Convictions of a Chef, Evan Marcus-Rotman talks about being arrested for selling LSD when he was 23 and spending 12 ½ “hellish” years in prison. Like Shore, Marcus-Rotman found that meditation helped him cope. He also found another form of salvation: learning how to cook in the prison kitchen. After his release, he studied at the California Culinary Academy and worked as a personal chef for the internationally rich and famous (the Grateful Dead and John Mayer, for example). “In a familiar, unpretentiously anecdotal style, the author takes readers on a fascinating tour of his career and provides a unique glimpse into a world of extraordinary privilege,” says our reviewer. “He also reflects soberly on the contradictions and cruelties embedded within the war on drugs, which sent him to prison for a transaction that had netted him $150.” 

T.L. Cromwell writes about her career as a corrections officer in the California prison system in Time Served. As a single mother, she wanted a stable job to support her daughter. She sheds light on the prison system itself, correctional officers, and incarcerated people. Cromwell is qualified to understand and write about all sides. As a child in South Central Los Angeles, she had visited several incarcerated relatives while they were in prison. Another notable theme, says our reviewer, isCromwell’s “experience as a Black woman working in the justice system; she tells of being racially profiled when she first worked at Juvenile Hall; later, she became the only Black female captain at California State Prison, Los Angeles County.” All told, the memoir is “a compelling and personal story of the world of corrections.”

Chaya Schechner is the president of Kirkus Indie.