Solitary

As a child, books serve as an early reminder of Woodfox’s subordinate position in society as an African American, when he encounters a sixth-grade social studies textbook that does not acknowledge his reality, as a Black child growing up in a Black neighborhood but instead focuses on white America. The realization that white Americans lived in better circumstances—and moreover, that everyone was aware of this fact—was an early introduction to racism for Woodfox. At this point in Solitary, books serve as a mirror for Woodfox’s developmental stage. When he encounters the reality of systemic injustice, he is not strengthened by this realization, but wounded by it. He writes that “the lessons of that sixth-grade class had weakened me in a way I can’t describe” (9).

The next time Woodfox returns to the motif of books, the circumstances are different. This time, it’s in the context of an encounter with the Black Panther Party, in pre-trial detention in New York. When he encounters the Panthers, they teach him about the accomplishments of Black people and the long history of injustice in the United States. Woodfox has trouble absorbing this message until he reads a book called A Different Drummer, featuring a Black main character who destroys his connections to the past, slavery, and racism, in order to move on. In this way, a book is once again exposing the reality of racism to Woodfox, but this time, he is buttressed by the principles of the Black Panther Party and commits to ending racism and the oppression of Black people, particularly in prisons.

From this point, books serve as a source of intellectual and emotional development for Woodfox; as he moves into his forties, he writes that he expanded upon the principles he’d been taught by the Black Panther Party, adding insights he’d gleaned from reading books by authors such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, and Mother Theresa. In this way, books show his continuous growth and his commitment to principles as a way of living a meaningful life. Books are also a source of escape. They offer him a chance to lose himself in a story and leave his surroundings behind and are also educational tools that allow him to transgress against the expectations of prison officials who considered Woodfox, and other inmates like him, subhuman. Books are also a source of pride, in that they offer Woodfox a route to teaching others to read, an action he calls his greatest accomplishment. Books set Woodfox free in another way, as legal books provided the foundation for his first challenge of his conviction for the murder of Brent Miller, setting off a series of actions that would lead to his release, forty years later.

Finally, the fact that Woodfox turned his story of suffering into a book—given that books had served as such an important vehicle for emancipation in his life—is a final act of resistance and liberation in the face of injustice