{"title":"Randall Horton","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the poignant and powerful poetry of Randall Horton, blending personal narrative with sharp social commentary. Discover collections that resonate with honesty and explore themes of identity, resilience, and redemption.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"dead-weight-book-randall-horton-9780810144637","title":"Dead Weight","description":"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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362039337233,"sku":"CIN0810144638VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368042238225,"sku":"CIN0810144638G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007946096913,"sku":"NIN9780810144637","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0810144638.jpg?v=1763477559"},{"product_id":"pitch-dark-anarchy-book-randall-horton-9780810152274","title":"Pitch Dark Anarchy","description":"Pitch Dark Anarchy investigates the danger of one single narrative with multilayered poems that challenge concepts of beauty and image, race and identity, as well as the construction of skin colour. Through African American memory and moments in literature, the poems seek to disrupt and dismantle foundations that create erasures and echoes of the unremembered. Pitch Dark Anarchy uses the slave revolt of the Amistad as a starting point, a metaphor for \"\"opposition\"\" and \"\"against.\"\" These themes run through the very core for the book while drawing on inventive and playful language. The poems bring to life human experiences and conditions created by an \"\"elite\"\" society. In these poems, locations and landscapes are always shifting, proving that our shared experiences can be interchangeable. At the very core of Pitch Dark Anarchy is a seven-part poem based on the artist Margret Bowland’s Another Thorny Crown Series, which are paintings of an African American girl in white face.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362127253777,"sku":"CIN0810152274G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51848130625809,"sku":"CIN0810152274VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0810152274.jpg?v=1763472262"},{"product_id":"hook-a-memoir-book-randall-horton-9780988735569","title":"Hook: A Memoir","description":"Literary Nonfiction. African \u0026amp; African American Studies. Latino\/Latina Studies. Winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association Discover Award for Creative Nonfiction. HOK: A MEMOIR is a gripping story of transformation. Without excuse or indulgence, author and educator Randall Horton explores his downward spiral from unassuming Howard University undergraduate to homeless drug addict, international cocaine smuggler, and incarcerated felon--before showing us the redemptive role that writing and literature played in helping him reclaim his life. The multilayered narrative bridges past and present through both the vivid portrayal of Horton's singular experiences and his correspondence in letters with the anonymous Lxxxx, a Latina woman awaiting trial. HOK explores race and social construction in America, the forgotten lives within the prison industrial complex, and the resilience of the human spirit.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50414976663825,"sku":"CIN0988735563VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51010873065745,"sku":"NIN9780988735569","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51416826511633,"sku":"CIN0988735563G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0988735563.jpg?v=1751109193"},{"product_id":"289-128-book-randall-horton-9780813179889","title":"{#289-128}","description":"\"Forgive state poet #289-128 \/ for not scribbling illusions \/ of trickery as if timeless hell \/ could be captured by stanzas \/ alliteration or slant rhyme,\" remarks the speaker, Maryland Department of Corrections prisoner {#289-128}, early in this haunting collection. Three sections -- {#289-128} Property of the State, {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23), and {#289-128} Poet in New York -- frame the countless ways in which the narrator's body and life are socially and legally rendered by the state even as the act of poetry helps him reclaim an identity during imprisonment.  These poems address the prison industrial complex, the carceral state, the criminal justice system, racism, violence, love, resilience, hope, and despair while exploring the idea of freedom in a cell. In the tradition of Dennis Brutus's  Letters to Martha, Wole Soyinka's  A Shuttle in the Crypt, and Etheridge Knight's  The Essential Etheridge Knight,  {#289-128} challenges the language of incarceration -- especially the ways in which it reinforces stigmas and stereotypes. Though {#289-128} refuses to be defined as a felon, this collection viscerally details the dehumanizing effects of prison, which linger long after release. It also illuminates the ways in which we all are relegated to cells or boundaries, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008277283089,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008281149713,"sku":"NIN9780813179889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813179882.jpg?v=1751011001"},{"product_id":"final-words-book-randall-horton-9780813197838","title":"Final Words","description":"In 1976 the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the legality of capital punishment in their ruling on Gregg v. Georgia. In the 46 years since the decision was handed down, 1,551 convicted prisoners have been executed. The United States is the only Western nation - and one of four advanced democracies - that regularly applies the death penalty. While the death penalty is legal in 27 states, only 21 have the means to carry out death sentences. Of those states, Texas has executed the most prisoners in recent history, condemning 578 people to death since the 1976 ruling, beginning with the death of Charlie Brooks in 1982\\. Texas retains the third-largest death row population behind California and Florida. In the summer of 2020, the Trump administration broke a nearly 17-year stay during which the federal government did not sanction any executions when it put 13 inmates to death over six months. Seventeen of the 45 current federal death row inmates, the highest proportion of any state, are currently incarcerated in Texas.    _Final Words_ is a project that addresses the death penalty in the United States as a violation of human rights. Consisting of a collection of government documents relating to the 578 executed Texas inmates, each set of pages reveals a portrait of a life bookended by violence in which final moments are often spent expressing words of love for family and friends, sorrow for victims, and gratitude for life lived. The compilation stands as a stark indictment of a system built by institutions rampant with racism, classism, and sexism. Each entry, each story, each utterance will challenge readers to answer the question: is there room for humanity in the American justice complex?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51419847786769,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51419847819537,"sku":"NGR9780813197838","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51606361997585,"sku":"CIN081319783XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081319783X.jpg?v=1750703187"},{"product_id":"hook-book-randall-horton-9780988735590","title":"Hook","description":"Literary Nonfiction. African \u0026amp; African American Studies. Latino\/Latina Studies. Winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association Discover Award for Creative Nonfiction. HOK: A MEMOIR is a gripping story of transformation. Without excuse or indulgence, author and educator Randall Horton explores his downward spiral from unassuming Howard University undergraduate to homeless drug addict, international cocaine smuggler, and incarcerated felon--before showing us the redemptive role that writing and literature played in helping him reclaim his life. The multilayered narrative bridges past and present through both the vivid portrayal of Horton's singular experiences and his correspondence in letters with the anonymous Lxxxx, a Latina woman awaiting trial. 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