Jess Evans

“Once you've seen how broken someone is it's like seeing them naked—you can't look at them the same anymore.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Reading was my salvation. Libraries and universities and schools from all over Louisiana donated books to Angola and for once, the willful ignorance of the prison administration paid off for us, because there were a lot of radical books in the prison library: Books we wouldn’t have been allowed to get through the mail. Books we never could have afforded to buy. Books we had never heard of. Herman, King, and I first gravitated to books and authors that dealt with politics and race—George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Steve Biko, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, J. A. Rogers’s From “Superman” to Man. We read anything we could find on slavery, communism, socialism, Marxism, anti-imperialism, the African independence movements, and independence movements from around the world. I would check off these books on the library order form and never expect to get them until they came. Leaning against my wall in the cell, sitting on the floor, on my bed, or at my table, I read.”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

“I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.”
― V.C. Andrews, Seeds of Yesterday

“You want me to believe that I’m OK when you know I’m not OK.”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement