Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays

by Randall Horton

Dead Weight chronicles the improbable turnaround of a drug smuggler who, after being sentenced to eight years in state prison, returned to society to earn a PhD in creative writing and become the only tenured professor in the United States with seven felony convictions. Horton’s visceral essays highlight the difficulties of trying to change one’s life for the better, how the weight of felony convictions never dissipates.

The memoir begins with a conversation between Horton and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man statue in New York City. Their imagined dialogue examines the psychological impact of racism on Black men and boys, including Horton’s separation from his mother, immediately after his birth, in a segregated Alabama hospital. From his current life as a professor and prison reformer, Horton looks back on his experiences as a drug smuggler and trafficker during the 1980s–1990s as well as the many obstacles he faced after his release. He also examines the lasting impact of his drug activity on those around him, reflecting on the allure of economic freedom and the mental escapism that cocaine provided, an allure so strong that both sellers and users were willing to risk prison. Horton shares historical context and vivid details about people caught in the war on drugs who became unsuspecting protagonists in somebody else’s melodrama.

Lyrical and gripping, Dead Weight reveals the lifelong effects of one man’s incarceration on his psyche, his memories, and his daily experience of American society.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2022

About the author

Randall Horton is the author of a previous memoir and several books of poetry, including Pitch Dark Anarchy: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2013) and The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street. In 2019 he served as poet-in-residence for the Civil Rights Corps in Washington, DC, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a Right to Return Fellowship from the Soze Foundation, he currently sits on the Advisory Board of PEN America’s PEN Prison Writing Program. He is a professor of English at the University of New Haven.

Reviews

[Nette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Randall Horton blew my mind, he took me on a journey and I saw everything he was writing in Dead Weight. At times horrifying, at times painful, there was some humor and some lovely moments like those shared with his Mother. His words are poetry, his mentions of dead weight and how that wording can mean and exist in one's life is very clever. Dead Weight is Dr. Randall Horton's story, but it could be the story of many Black men who have been through the system. A lot of the judgment, the closed doors, and identity questions that come about after being released can be overwhelming for any person, especially when you are trying to do better and be better, it's like the world stops seeing you as a human and I think that is why the number of reoffending rates are high. Also, those last chapters and his visit to the Bahamas and that whole breakdown of who was involved, and why the drug epidemic existed, is what I hope many people still determined to gamble their life to the streets can hear from all the loudspeakers available.
Dead Weight takes you on a journey, his journey, of Dr. Horton through the penitentiary system and on to the other side, where he can honestly revisit those events, decisions, affiliations, everything he went through, and I hope with this book, Dr. Horton can stop carrying all of that dead weight, we see you!

[Camisha Broussard · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Part I to the very last sentence, Randall Horton's Dead Weight is full of the poetic language, imagery, and in-depth characterization that true readers love. It's hard to review this book without wanting to mention some of the most powerful images and scenarios one might imagine from a man such as Randall, but if you are thinking that this is a page turner - a window into a life that few of us, very few of us - will ever know . . . you're almost right.
A true testimony to the power of resilience, grit, and Blackmanhood.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This new modern classic is an essential read. An engrossing and brilliant collection of essays of a former 1980's drug smuggler and trafficker who turned seven felony convictions into a life of poetry and academia. A book of brutal truth under 200 pages baring the weight of 10,000 lbs.

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great look at what makes us. This man had such a contrasting upbringing. He struggled. He turned his life again.