Dr. Maya Shankar

Am I going to become violent for the first time?

Am I going to be able to protect myself from violence?

He was so scared.

And about a year into his sentence, he has a powerful experience with moral elevation.

He runs into one of his fellow inmates

And this guy, Bilal, totally defies Duane's expectations of what it means to be a prisoner.

He shows such deep care for all the younger prisoners, teaching them how to box and to protect themselves, which Dwayne thought was not possible in prison.

He sort of thought you had to be ruthlessly self-interested in order to survive.

He also carried himself in such a dignified way.

Dwayne describes it as being like a man in uniform.

And he would get up an hour before the guards came over for count time, and he would have done 250 pushups in his cell before that even happened.

And so Dwayne was so inspired by Bilal's example because it showed him that maybe you didn't have to be a certain way just because you were a prisoner.

And it was with this empowered mindset that when he discovers a book of poetry and reads a poem that represents young men and boys of color in prison, he thinks to himself for the first time, maybe I could be a poet.

I can't do what Bilal can do.

That's what he says, right?

I'm not strong.

I'm not going to be able to teach the kids out of box, but I can represent them through my words.

And fast forward a couple of decades, Duane is a Yale Law School graduate and the Garthur Genius Prize winner and writes some of the most gorgeous poetry I've ever read about the experience of young men of color in prison.

And so I share this example because

Moral beauty and the experience of moral elevation is actually all around us if we are just willing to be keen observers, if we just are willing to be in the moment and pay attention.