Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has been teaching classes in drama, literature, philosophy and history in the college-degree program offered by Rutgers University to inmates in the New Jersey prison system. His latest book, OUR CLASS: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, is a haunting and powerful account of the voices trapped within a cruel penal system that too often defines their lives.
Recorded 11.16.2021
After studying some of August Wilson’s plays, Hedges class at East Jersey State Prison decided to write their own play Caged which played to sold out audiences at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ and went on to be published. In Our Class, Hedges chronicles the class’s grief and suffering, as well as their personal transformation in crafted detail, giving voice to those who our society often demonizes and abandons.
Stephan Whitley is a former student and a successful graduate of Rutgers who was locked up in multiple New Jersey prisons and is now engaged in criminal justice reform work.
The stink, the mice, the yelling. My time in solitary was the most savage moment of my life.
from Stephan Whitley’s essay at nj.com
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