Reentry after release from incarceration is often presented as a story of redemption. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Those being released must navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas, in a journey that is often confusing, complex, and precarious. Making use of life-history interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic fieldwork with low-income urban residents of color, primarily Black men, Calvin John Smiley finds that reentry requires the recently released to negotiate a web of disjointed and often contradictory systems that serve as an extension of the carceral system. No longer behind bars but not fully free, the recently released navigate a state of limbo that deprives them of opportunity and support while leaving them locked in a cycle of perpetual punishment. Warning of the dangers of reformist efforts that only serve to further entrench carceral systems, Purgatory Citizenship advocates for abolitionist solutions rooted in the visions of the people most affected.

The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens. A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.

Reentry after release from incarceration is often presented as a story of redemption. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Those being released must navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas, in a journey that is often confusing, complex, and precarious. Making use of life-history interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic fieldwork with low-income urban residents of color, primarily Black men, Calvin John Smiley finds that reentry requires the recently released to negotiate a web of disjointed and often contradictory systems that serve as an extension of the carceral system. No longer behind bars but not fully free, the recently released navigate a state of limbo that deprives them of opportunity and support while leaving them locked in a cycle of perpetual punishment. Warning of the dangers of reformist efforts that only serve to further entrench carceral systems, Purgatory Citizenship advocates for abolitionist solutions rooted in the visions of the people most affected.

Purgatorio is Martínez's most moving, most autobiographical novel and yet it is also a ghost story, the ghost story which has been Argentina's history since 1973. It begins, 'Simón Cardoso had been dead for thirty years when Emilia Dupuy, his wife, found him at lunchtime in the dining room of Trudy Tuesday.' Simón, a cartographer like Emilia, had vanished during one of their trips to map an uncharted country road. Later testimonies had confirmed that he had been one of the thousands of victims of the military regime - arrested, tortured and executed for being a "subversive." Yet Emilia had refused to believe this account, and had spent her entire life waiting for him to reappear. Now in her sixties, the Simón she has found is identical to the man she lost three decades ago. While skirting around the mystery, Eloy Martínez masterfully peels away layer upon layer of history -both personal and political. Just as Simón's disappearance comes to represent the thousands of disappearances that became such a common occurrence during the dictatorship, so Emilia's refusal to accept his death mirror's the country's unwillingness to face its reality.

Companion to: Heaven: The logic of eternal joy (2002).

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST The first English-language story collection from “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (Guardian), “a playful, whip-smart literary conjuror: a Kundera or Rushdie of post-Khomeini Iran” (Wall Street Journal) In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.

"A man and a woman enter a room. We see only a small bed, two chairs, and a table. Is it an asylum? A prison? Interrogation room? Questions are asked and answered. We feel we know the story. In this room, both the man and woman are faced with the truths of their lives. Playwright Ariel Dorfman puts before us the question of justice and forgiveness. Are there crimes for which there can be no forgiveness? If there is no forgiveness, how do we move on with our lives? Purgatorio reacquaints us with the tragedy of Jason and Medea."--Publisher's website.