PS: Reading this book feels like sitting in on a private meditation of yours that we the reader get to be privy to, especially reading your letters. In trying to sum up the book and tie in the inner-child work to abolition and carcerality, what I came up with is:
Carceral logic is so pervasive that abolition goes beyond the dismantling of brick-and-mortar prisons and institutions that enact harm, and deep into the psyche, which becomes a site of reproducing carceral logic until we consciously unlearn to. Liberation, then, is inner work as much as it's outer work: finding the true self that lives underneath misafropedia and beyond the confines of binary thinking. The inner child represented in the therapy narrative, the left hand that you were made not to use as a child: it's in those reclamations.
Would you agree with that?
HZ: I love that description. I'm like, oh wow, I'm gonna have to steal that. [laughs]
"I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page?"
Sometimes I still find myself trying to wrap it up in a bow for my elevator pitch, 'cause it's so much. But yeah, that covers a lot. I love that you bring it back to meditation and the feeling of it being meditative, because so much of the book was done when I [was] re-exploring my spirituality, and that included a lot of meditative practices. I don't get into that as much as I do the therapy, but it was very much hand-in-hand with me relearning what meditation was, building my altar, getting in touch with my grandmother, and it really was just so much inner work that had to be done. I think that's the harder part of abolition: that healing work. I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page? Those moments were added in much later, as I was struggling with how to actually express what this is like. And I'm like "Oh, I can just put that on the page." And I think that really brought the book together.
![PS: Reading this book feels like sitting in on a private meditation of yours that we the reader get to be privy to, especially reading your letters. In trying to sum up the book and tie in the inner-child work to abolition and carcerality, what I came up with is:
Carceral logic is so pervasive that abolition goes beyond the dismantling of brick-and-mortar prisons and institutions that enact harm, and deep into the psyche, which becomes a site of reproducing carceral logic until we consciously unlearn to. Liberation, then, is inner work as much as it's outer work: finding the true self that lives underneath misafropedia and beyond the confines of binary thinking. The inner child represented in the therapy narrative, the left hand that you were made not to use as a child: it's in those reclamations.
Would you agree with that?
HZ: I love that description. I'm like, oh wow, I'm gonna have to steal that. [laughs]
"I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page?"
Sometimes I still find myself trying to wrap it up in a bow for my elevator pitch, 'cause it's so much. But yeah, that covers a lot. I love that you bring it back to meditation and the feeling of it being meditative, because so much of the book was done when I [was] re-exploring my spirituality, and that included a lot of meditative practices. I don't get into that as much as I do the therapy, but it was very much hand-in-hand with me relearning what meditation was, building my altar, getting in touch with my grandmother, and it really was just so much inner work that had to be done. I think that's the harder part of abolition: that healing work. I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page? Those moments were added in much later, as I was struggling with how to actually express what this is like. And I'm like "Oh, I can just put that on the page." And I think that really brought the book together.](https://media1.popsugar-assets.com/files/thumbor/apjrK8zfQKMXuLs2rnXUHLSQ_gw/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:format_auto-!!-:strip_icc-!!-/2021/04/26/621/n/44344577/32124ba461f2c993_GettyImages-1228771819/i/PS-Reading-this-book-feels-like-sitting-in-on-private-meditation.jpg "PS: Reading this book feels like sitting in on a private meditation of yours that we the reader get to be privy to, especially reading your letters. In trying to sum up the book and tie in the inner-child work to abolition and carcerality, what I came up with is:
Carceral logic is so pervasive that abolition goes beyond the dismantling of brick-and-mortar prisons and institutions that enact harm, and deep into the psyche, which becomes a site of reproducing carceral logic until we consciously unlearn to. Liberation, then, is inner work as much as it's outer work: finding the true self that lives underneath misafropedia and beyond the confines of binary thinking. The inner child represented in the therapy narrative, the left hand that you were made not to use as a child: it's in those reclamations.
Would you agree with that?
HZ: I love that description. I'm like, oh wow, I'm gonna have to steal that. [laughs]
\"I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page?\"
Sometimes I still find myself trying to wrap it up in a bow for my elevator pitch, 'cause it's so much. But yeah, that covers a lot. I love that you bring it back to meditation and the feeling of it being meditative, because so much of the book was done when I [was] re-exploring my spirituality, and that included a lot of meditative practices. I don't get into that as much as I do the therapy, but it was very much hand-in-hand with me relearning what meditation was, building my altar, getting in touch with my grandmother, and it really was just so much inner work that had to be done. I think that's the harder part of abolition: that healing work. I wanted to show the process of that, and what better way to do it than to actually put those moments where I'm trying to interact with my inner child on the page? Those moments were added in much later, as I was struggling with how to actually express what this is like. And I'm like \"Oh, I can just put that on the page.\" And I think that really brought the book together.")
