I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup [Paperback]

A veteran teacher gives an “inside” view of the lives of juveniles sentenced as adults
 
David Chura taught high school in a New York county penitentiary for ten years—five days a week, seven hours a day. In these pages, hegives a face to a population regularly demonized and reduced to statisticsby the mainstream media. Through language marked by both the grit of the street and the expansiveness of poetry, the stories of these young people break down the di­visions we so easily erect between us and them, the keepers and the kept—and call into question the increasing practice of sentencing juveniles as adults.
Introduction
 
Chapter One:The Human Stain
 
Chapter Two:From the Projects to the Condos
 
Chapter Three:Prison Birthday
 
Chapter Four:Pinups
 
Chapter Five:Ghost Story
 
Chapter Six:Shit-Eating Grin
 
Chapter Seven:Addicted
 
Chapter Eight:Mirror, Mirror
 
Chapter Nine:Children of Disappointment
 
Chapter Ten:The Things They Carried
 
Chapter Eleven:Mothers of Invention
 
Chapter Twelve:Word
 
Chapter Thirteen:Man-child
 
Chapter Fourteen:Chicks in the Big House
 
Chapter Fifteen:Meet the Author
 
Chapter Sixteen:Visiting Room
 
Chapter Seventeen:Grand Opening
 
Chapter Eighteen:Safety and Security
 
Afterword 
“Riveting . . . An indictment of the system.”—Sam Roberts,New York Times
 
“As U.S. courts send more than 250,000 minors each year into adult prisons (according to a 2008 Juvenile Justice report), Chura’s anguished, incisive depiction of one of those outposts is . . . a compelling call to relÃf