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Where I'm Writing From: Essays from Pennsylvania's Death Row

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Reading Reginald Sinclair Lewis's recently published collection of essays entitled "Where I'm Writing From" reminds us of the undeniable humanity of every person incarcerated on death row in the United States. Held on Pennsylvania's death row since 1983 for a murder he has always denied having committed, Lewis is an award-winning African-American writer. He has won three P.E.N. American Center Writing Awards for prisoners, and his short play, "An Affinity for Angels," was selected for the 4th Annual Juneteenth Festival of new works at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville in 2000. Lewis has also authored two self-published collections of poems entitled "Leaving Death Row" and "Inside My Head."

"Where I'm Writing From" gives those in the free world a glimpse of the often spiteful shakedowns, seizure of property, and abuse perpetrated by corrections officials working on death row. But it also gives us the chance to meet some of the inmates - like Willie, who likes to feed the birds, and Freddie, the Hell's Angel with his tall tales about beautiful women. This community includes the now-famous Mumia Abu-Jamal and the recently exonerated Harold Wilson. Lewis also discusses the cases of a number of fellow inmates whose prior unsatisfactory legal representation begs new consideration for their cases, and he reserves a special compassion for his writings about the women on death row.

The racial and economic disparities that surface in this book may be stark, but the resentments they engender are complex. At times, for example, Lewis's pride in his own accomplishment spits wincingly in the face of the rural, uneducated white correctional officers resentful of the power this inmate can wield with his words. An example of such power surfaces in the sardonic humor of Lewis's fantasy piece about inmates granted the right to vote and forming the "Pen Voting Party." In his imagination, the prisoners' voices become a powerful force in the political arena, challenging the status quo at every turn. The momentum of this reverie builds to a vertiginous climax, until an inevitable set-up sends everything crashing down. Confidence in the inmates is undermined, and they are returned to "invisible" status, ultimately losing their right to vote. This daydream seems to parallel the disappointing surges of unfulfilled hope that those incarcerated on death row experience in the midst of their daily despair.

In addition to his more activist writings of protest, Lewis offers vivid vignettes about his youth in the streets of North Philly and shares frank and loving reflections about his family members. These autobiographical threads combine to give Reggie Lewis a meaningful context, and "Where I'm Writing From" alerts us to the fact that every human life has such a context, even the lives of those death-row inmates who have been forgotten and left to decay in the cold isolation of their prison cells.