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Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary
This compelling collection of stories told directly by people personally impacted by solitary confinement is the first book in a new Voice of Witness series with Haymarket Books.
An estimated 80,000 Americans are held in solitary confinement in prisons across the country. Solitary confinement, often in cells no bigger than six by ten feet, means twenty-four hours per day with little or no meaningful human contact. Six by Ten explores the mental, physical, and spiritual impacts of America’s widespread embrace of solitary confinement, as told through the first-person narratives of individuals subjected to solitary confinement, family members on the outside, and corrections officers.
Each chapter presents a different individual’s story and probes how Americans from all over the country and all walks of life find themselves held in solitary for years or even decades at a time. In addition to evocative first-hand accounts, the book also includes essays and analysis on how solitary became such a prominent feature of the US prison system today.
Solitary confinement is the little-known dead end of the US criminal justice system. To understand that system, people need to understand and wrestle with what is happening in America’s isolation cells.
Mateo Hoke is writer, journalist, and co-editor of Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation.
Taylor Pendergrass is a lawyer and activist focused on criminal justice reform. He currently works for the American Civil Liberties Union.
About the Author
Mateo Hoke is writer, journalist, and coeditor of Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life under Occupation. He studied journalism at the University of Colorado and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Taylor Pendergrass is an advocate and activist around ending mass incarceration and racial injustice in the criminal legal system. He currently works for the ACLU and lives in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Duke University and the University of Colorado School of Law.
An estimated 80,000 Americans are held in solitary confinement in prisons across the country. Solitary confinement, often in cells no bigger than six by ten feet, means twenty-four hours per day with little or no meaningful human contact. Six by Ten explores the mental, physical, and spiritual impacts of America’s widespread embrace of solitary confinement, as told through the first-person narratives of individuals subjected to solitary confinement, family members on the outside, and corrections officers.
Each chapter presents a different individual’s story and probes how Americans from all over the country and all walks of life find themselves held in solitary for years or even decades at a time. In addition to evocative first-hand accounts, the book also includes essays and analysis on how solitary became such a prominent feature of the US prison system today.
Solitary confinement is the little-known dead end of the US criminal justice system. To understand that system, people need to understand and wrestle with what is happening in America’s isolation cells.
Mateo Hoke is writer, journalist, and co-editor of Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation.
Taylor Pendergrass is a lawyer and activist focused on criminal justice reform. He currently works for the American Civil Liberties Union.
About the Author
Mateo Hoke is writer, journalist, and coeditor of Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life under Occupation. He studied journalism at the University of Colorado and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Taylor Pendergrass is an advocate and activist around ending mass incarceration and racial injustice in the criminal legal system. He currently works for the ACLU and lives in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Duke University and the University of Colorado School of Law.
345 pages, Hardcover
First published October 2, 2018
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731 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 28, 2021
A stark look at reality inside our prisons-it's both unbelievable and completely expected.
June 22, 2020
Everyone needs to read this book. It is a very heavy read. I took a break from it for several months because it was very sad, but it is extremely important to read these people’s stories & to re-evaluate how we treat PEOPLE *heavy emphasis on the fact that we’re talking about living breathing humans*.
July 13, 2024
Wow!! Nothing but gratitude for these writers and those who shared their stories. So thankful to have read such intimate life stories, including some people’s most vulnerable moments. This has inspired me to do more for the criminal justice movement in my community!
April 26, 2019
A genuinely gut wrenching account of the horrific torture and abuse that American prisoners are subjected to on a daily basis, not to mention the fickle nature of the American “justice” system that addresses social ills with ever expanding punitive incarceration. As someone who reads a lot of disturbing content about wars, genocides, torture, human rights abuses of every variety; this was without a doubt the most unsettling book I’ve read in recent memory.
The collection of stories that Pendergrass and Hoke have painstakingly curated leaves the reader with no doubt that solitary confinement unequivocally constitutes torture; and for any callous readers who remain unpersuaded by such anecdotal evidence, they also cite numerous academic psychological sources throughout the footnotes and appendixes to verify this claim.
As one lawyer writes: “You may think my clients are prisoners of war held in some terrible foreign hellhole, or perhaps captives of fanatical terrorist cells. But all of them are in solitary confinement in US prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers. In the United States, almost nobody survives solitary confinement undamaged, and many don’t survive at all.”
A timely and relevant read given the current conversation around granting suffrage to the incarcerated population of the US. This book sheds a humanizing light on a villainized demographic, and should be required reading for anyone who continues to subscribe to the misinformed notion that mass incarceration keeps “us” safe from “them”.
The collection of stories that Pendergrass and Hoke have painstakingly curated leaves the reader with no doubt that solitary confinement unequivocally constitutes torture; and for any callous readers who remain unpersuaded by such anecdotal evidence, they also cite numerous academic psychological sources throughout the footnotes and appendixes to verify this claim.
As one lawyer writes: “You may think my clients are prisoners of war held in some terrible foreign hellhole, or perhaps captives of fanatical terrorist cells. But all of them are in solitary confinement in US prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers. In the United States, almost nobody survives solitary confinement undamaged, and many don’t survive at all.”
A timely and relevant read given the current conversation around granting suffrage to the incarcerated population of the US. This book sheds a humanizing light on a villainized demographic, and should be required reading for anyone who continues to subscribe to the misinformed notion that mass incarceration keeps “us” safe from “them”.
November 4, 2018
I got this book from one of the editors, Taylor Pendergrass. It is an oral history in first person voice of the men and women who have spent time in solitary confinement in different prison systems. I worked with Taylor in New York state where a settlement was achieved to reduce the use of solitary confinement and improve the conditions for those left behind. I now monitor the settlement and while far from perfect, the total number of prisoners in solitary continues to drop. I go to NY prisons twice a year and interview the men still in solitary. They frequently are appreciative of the changes that were accomplished, especially the ability to make phone calls when they are in the SHU.
But this book? Wow. It is very well done. The approach the editors took is to show us the person before, and sometimes after, their solitary confinement prison experience. This approach makes their stories much more powerful.
Taylor gave me my first copy but I plan to buy several more. I will share this book. There is an understandable tendency to not want to read a book like this. Who wants to read about the experience of people in pain? But that is pretty much the problem. The practices that have devolved in our prisons is every citizen's responsibility--not just those who run prisons. The light of day is critical.
But this book? Wow. It is very well done. The approach the editors took is to show us the person before, and sometimes after, their solitary confinement prison experience. This approach makes their stories much more powerful.
Taylor gave me my first copy but I plan to buy several more. I will share this book. There is an understandable tendency to not want to read a book like this. Who wants to read about the experience of people in pain? But that is pretty much the problem. The practices that have devolved in our prisons is every citizen's responsibility--not just those who run prisons. The light of day is critical.
April 14, 2021
"In solitary, there were times where I completely lost track of time. I have maybe a hundred watches now. I've got some very expensive watches, but most of them are ten, twenty dollar watches. I have one watch on, I have a pocket watch, and I have the clock on my phone. I have time everywhere around me, because I'm afraid of losing track of time again." --Brian Nelson
"The MDOC is almost completely run and staffed by white people. The majority of the prison population is Black. It begs the question, why does crime in urban Black areas translate into jobs for rural or mostly white areas? There are white-majority towns in the state where the main industry seems to be corrections." --Shearod McFarland
"Prison had become the limit of my dreams." --Shearod McFarland
If you're on the fence about prison abolition, read this book. This is a collection of powerful narratives from survivors of solitary confinement and their family members. They describe the terror they felt in solitary confinement and the lasting damage it caused them. The survivors describe how there were no resources to prepare them to transition back to the general prison population and back to the free world. Though all the narratives focus on different interactions with solitary confinement, all of the survivors have one commonality: they had an uninterrupted and undifferentiated mass of time that they had to face, with little mental stimulation and human contact. And this practice of isolation could range from a couple weeks to a couple decades. Read that again. Solitary confinement for decades.
"The MDOC is almost completely run and staffed by white people. The majority of the prison population is Black. It begs the question, why does crime in urban Black areas translate into jobs for rural or mostly white areas? There are white-majority towns in the state where the main industry seems to be corrections." --Shearod McFarland
"Prison had become the limit of my dreams." --Shearod McFarland
If you're on the fence about prison abolition, read this book. This is a collection of powerful narratives from survivors of solitary confinement and their family members. They describe the terror they felt in solitary confinement and the lasting damage it caused them. The survivors describe how there were no resources to prepare them to transition back to the general prison population and back to the free world. Though all the narratives focus on different interactions with solitary confinement, all of the survivors have one commonality: they had an uninterrupted and undifferentiated mass of time that they had to face, with little mental stimulation and human contact. And this practice of isolation could range from a couple weeks to a couple decades. Read that again. Solitary confinement for decades.
October 30, 2018
Wow. This is a very impactful book! Enlightening and heartbreaking all at the same time. Sheds light on the deplorable conditions inside these prisons, the violence and the disgusting behavior of some the guards etc. For anyone that seeks truth, read this book. I was not totally so, but somewhat surprised how many were in there that claimed innocence on the original alleged crime and then also were given such a harsh stint in solitary for such minor offenses like contraband food etc, when sometimes you're doing anything you can just to feel like a person again or get a sense or normalcy to your day to day existence in a highly stressful situation. Highly recommend this book!
**This was an advanced reader copy provided by Edelweiss, which in no way influenced my opinion of this book but many thanks to them for their service**
**This was an advanced reader copy provided by Edelweiss, which in no way influenced my opinion of this book but many thanks to them for their service**
April 8, 2021
Devastating and horrific.
"If there's something that haunts me, it's those moments where I knew I was just about to go over the edge psychologically. I cannot describe what it feels like. The only word that comes to me is dread. But it was in those moments that I would find myself looking up from this black hole and seeing a light up at the very top of the hole. It appears when you are most depressed. The hole represents this moment, this one moment in which the dread became so overwhelming that you wish you were dead. I cannot think of a more depressing feeling than feeling yourself lose your balance. Thinking that you're not going to make it. Even those who made it lose something. After years of this, decades even, I don't think you're ever the same. I'm no longer sure you can ever go back to whatever normal might have been. Or considered yourself to be." --Micheal Dorrough
"If there's something that haunts me, it's those moments where I knew I was just about to go over the edge psychologically. I cannot describe what it feels like. The only word that comes to me is dread. But it was in those moments that I would find myself looking up from this black hole and seeing a light up at the very top of the hole. It appears when you are most depressed. The hole represents this moment, this one moment in which the dread became so overwhelming that you wish you were dead. I cannot think of a more depressing feeling than feeling yourself lose your balance. Thinking that you're not going to make it. Even those who made it lose something. After years of this, decades even, I don't think you're ever the same. I'm no longer sure you can ever go back to whatever normal might have been. Or considered yourself to be." --Micheal Dorrough
February 23, 2022
I knew the American prison system was bad. I fully expected it to be bad, inhumane, cruel, and needlessly punitive. And even so, I did not expect it to be nearly as bad as it was. This book demands to be read by a larger audience than will be able to stomach it, because this continues to happen with the complacent or apathetic support of the broader population who are willing to swallow the ever popular ‘tough on crime rhetoric’ that has caused our nation to imprison far and away more of its citizens than any other nation on earth, with little or no rehabilitation.
July 13, 2020
Solitary confinement must be banned. It's an affront to human rights and dignity. Clearly, the United States needs a radical transformation of its prison system, as well as its justice system. There is no notion of rehabilitation and thus once an individual enters the penal system, they are scarcely equipped to live within their communities again, particularly if they spend long stretches of their sentences in solitary confinement.
July 18, 2023
This is a book that everyone should read - a look into solitary confinement through the eyes of family members, correction officers, and prisoners themselves. Very eye opening, very hard to read - I was completely and totally horrified at what goes on in prisons.
June 18, 2019
If you are interested in the subject, it is a must read! Those are stories that need to be told.
September 30, 2019
Fascinating and impactful; a damning own-voice look at the effects of solitary confinement on those incarcerated in the US.
February 29, 2020
Worth reading whether you're passionate about the plight of the prison population or not.
October 18, 2020
I firmly believe that this book should be required reading for all state and federal politicians especially Governors.
Want to read
November 11, 2020Thankyou Haymarketbooks for book discount from $19.75 into $ 1.98
April 5, 2021
So raw, great accounts of being inside from many perspectives- excellent glimpses- brave voices
April 5, 2023
Very insightful. I would love to hear the updates since it was published. I read an article one contributor wrote on correctional facilities during Covid.
December 5, 2023
This was heartbreaking to read, I had to put it down a few times. An eye opener into the horror that is our “justice system”.
December 26, 2023
Very eye opening and captivating stories of prisoners in solitary confinement
November 5, 2018
An exceptional read. Detailed stories from a diverse group of people impacted by solitary confinement.
December 29, 2018
This book was super interesting, it was helpful to read actual perspectives and experiences and great tips for doing more.
July 31, 2025
First person accounts.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews