Reginald

So that's the kind of devastating thing about it is recognizing that I changed my life forever.

Yeah, I did.

I did two years off and on in solitary.

But the thing that's really remarkable is

I'm 18 years old, 17 years old.

I'm in a hole.

And they took all of your books from me.

And the thing is, 24 hours in a cell with just four walls, not as beautifully decorated as the walls around me.

And I was unraveling.

And I heard a guy call out for a book.

And I realized that these dudes had created an underground library for themselves.

And all you had to do was call out for a book and they would sing you one.

And so I said, hey, yo, send me a book.

And they sent me this anthology called The Black Poets.

And that introduced me to

Robert Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Etheridge Knight.

And I'm reading these words, and I realized that these poets were able to capture an entire life in 14 lines.

And I remember buying two books.

This is the first books I bought with my money.

It was a Sonia Sanchez book called Under a Soprano Sky, and it was Sun Tzu's The Art of War.