A nonprofit organization with a goal of teaching state inmates writing skills has released a book of art and writing by men incarcerated in Unit 29, the destination for those considered the worst of the worst at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
The Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to teach state inmates writing skills, released Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison, “ to record human suffering as it unfolds,” according to Louis Bourgeois, the organization’s executive director. “Extreme situations result in extreme reactions,” he says. “But I’ll let the reader decide if the book is successful in rendering the accuracy of what goes on there, right under society’s nose.”
The essays do not gloss over what landed the writers in the most infamous unit of the state’s most infamous prison. Unit 29 houses about 700 people and the average age of the men there is 38.
The new book includes the work of over 30 incarcerated writers over a three-year period. Bourgeois said most of the writers had never written anything before, but they created what he called “a masterpiece of prison realism” about undergoing the harrowing experience of staying alive in a Mississippi prison such as the infamous Parchman.
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