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Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison Audiobook
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A haunting and powerfully moving book that gives voice to the poorest among us and lays bare the cruelty of a penal system that too often defines their lives
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges has taught courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history since 2013 in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University at East Jersey State Prison and other New Jersey prisons. In his first class at East Jersey State Prison, where students read and discussed plays by Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, among others, his class set out to write a play of their own.
In writing the play, Caged, which would run for a month in 2018 to sold-out audiences at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, and later be published, students gave words to the grief and suffering they and their families have endured, as well as to their hopes and dreams. The class’s artistic and personal discovery, as well as transformation, is chronicled in heart-breaking detail in Our Class.
This book gives a human face and a voice to those our society too often demonizes and abandons. It exposes the terrible crucible and injustice of America’s penal system and the struggle by those trapped within its embrace to live lives of dignity, meaning, and purpose.
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“This book could change everything. It could change our minds. It could buttress our hearts. It could make graspable why today’s prisons are contemporary slave plantations. I couldn’t put it down and I tried.”
— Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple
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“An affecting book in which every page urges more humane treatment of prisoners.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Through the men’s labor of love, Hedges calls on us to question our view of incarcerated people and our understanding of education’s purpose.”
— Booklist -
“Chris Hedges is the greatest radical writer and journalist of our generation!…This magnificent book confirms his grand stature.’’
— Cornel West, New York Times bestselling author -
‘’Hedges opens the door for the long-buried talents of the incarcerated. In turn, they open the door to a new and valuable perspective for us all.”
— Tom Fontana, Emmy Award-winning creator of Oz
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About Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, host of the Emmy Award–nominated RT America show On Contact, and author of two New York Times bestsellers. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans for fifteen years for the New York Times. He previously worked overseas for the Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has taught college credit courses through Rutgers University since 2013 in the New Jersey prison system.
About Prentice Onayemi
Prentice Onayemi is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator and a voice and film actor who is known for his roles in The Steam-Room Crooner, AmeriQua, and as Joey in the Tony Award–winning play War Horse.