Deborah Thomas

We are all the Children of.... A brilliantly colored flower, A flaming flower, And there is no one, There is no one Who regrets what we are. - Ramon Medina Silva

This installation is dedicated to all inmates who have discovered ways -- despite distressing circumstances -- of transcending misery, despair and the larger human tragedy of incarceration. To quote Billy Ray Johnson, "Prison life is dead." Yet the interior experience of spiritual empowerment or getting closer to one's authentic being (what the Quakers call "that of God"), nonetheless may manifest itself intensely and sometimes without apparent cause -- as these voices attest -- in the face of hopelessness, hardship and deprivation.

Each except included here (written by a political prisoner, prisoner of war, or convict) records an insight or experience which sustained its author beyond the limits of perception, ego or desire.

The following are just a few of the literary sources which were consulted:

Pancho Aguila, "April 9, 1974:4-a, 'The Hole'," Captive Voices: An Anthology from Folsom Prison. Paradise, California: Dustbook, 1975.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. Ed Eberhard Bethge. NY: The Macmillan Company, 1967.

Dennis Brutus, Letters to Martha and other poems from a South African Prison. London: Heinemann, 1968.

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice. New York: Dell, 1992 ed.

Ruth First, 117 Days. New York: Stein and Day, 1965.

Billy Ray Johnson, "A Lonely Soul," Captive Voices: An Anthology from Folsom Prison. Paradise, California: Dustbooks, 1975.