Memoir: MOTHER CALIFORNIA: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars

If you are interested in what really happens inside prison or just want to experience a great memoir, MOTHER CALIFORNIA: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars, by Kenneth E. Hartman, is the book to read.

Kenneth E. Hartman has served 30 continuous years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on a life without the possibility of parole sentence. An award-winning writer and prison reform activist, he helped establish the Honor Program at the California State Prison – Los Angeles County. He is currently leading grassroots campaigns to end life without parole sentences, to bring higher education back into the prison system, and to provide opportunities for prisoners to perform good works for the free world.

“In this memoir, a magnificent inquiry into the human condition, a man serving a life sentence in the California prison system documents the brutality and inhumanity of life “inside,” where criminals are victimized rather than rehabilitated, and chaos flowers among the despairing. Hartman, an eloquent, middle-aged prisoner convicted of murder at 19, tells a sad but unsentimental story: a rough childhood and a wish for invincibility fueled Hartman’s youth and downfall, but in the time since, he has married in prison, fathered a child, and currently works to improve the broken U.S. prison system. Hartman discovered his talent in a writing class, after having abandoned drugs; using it, he examines up close the “mad, violent circus” of prison life, his place in it, and the fate of his fellow prisoners: “Under the big tent of this brutally unnatural environment, few of us ever take the frightening step of analyzing our deeper motives.” Publishers Weekly, 11/10/09

“An illuminating, unflinching, self-portrait of a life behind bars. A snapshot of who we are as a society through the gritty prism of ‘how we punish those we throw away.’ If Charles Bukowski had committed murder and done time, this is what he would have written. Raw. Searing. Brutal. Written without self-pity. Regardless of your politics, you will read the last page of Mother California, close this book, and walk away transformed.” Erik Jensen co-author (with Jessica Blank) of the stage play and film The Exonerated, the play Aftermath and the memoir Living Justice: Love Freedom and the Making of The Exonerated

Kerry Cook and the SMU screening of "The Exonerated"

On Friday night a film screening of "The Exonerated" will precede a question and answer session from a man on which one of the movie's characters was based: Kerry Max Cook, an innocent man convicted of capital murder in 1977. After spending 22 years on death row, DNA testing exonerated him from the crime.

Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Human Rights Education Program, hopes that the 2 events - both Holbrook's photographs and Cook's presentation - will "rehumanize" inmates to the public eye.

"Cook spent as much time on death row as the average college student has been alive," Halperin said.

Today Cook is an anti-death penalty activist and author of his memoir "Chasing Justice," of which he will be signing copies and selling for $15 during the film screening. Senior Savannah Engel, Human Rights Chairman for Students for a Better Society, said that Cook's case is one of
hundreds.

"120 people so far have been declared innocent through DNA exoneration and there are many more in prison," she said. "The issue we're looking at is our court system."

Halperin said that Cook's legal case might be "the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct in U.S. history." The human rights advocate and SMU professor will also be a panelist at Thursday's "Truth" discussion, where he hopes to educate the audience about injustices in the legal system and mistreatment of inmates.

The film "The Exonerated" and Cook's book signing is a part of the SMU Leadership and Community Involvement Social Justice Film Screening and Central University Libraries. It will take place Friday from 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. in the Hughes-Trigg Commons.