The Sacred Eye of the Falcon - Lessons in Life from Death Row
By Steve Champion, Craig Ross & Stanley Tookie-Williams A Collection of sayings and aphorisms concerning self transformation under exceedingly difficult circumstances. The three death row authors, including the late Stanley Tookie-Williams, draw on their combined 80 plus years of experience on death row to formulate first principles for personal growth and social change. Available to buy at lulu.com |
Dead to Deliverance - A Death Row Memoir by Steve Champion.
Champion describes his early life in Los Angeles and the allure for him of
the Crips street gang, his incarceration and experience in the U.S. prison
system, his life on death row, and his growth and struggle as a human
being. He also offers a critical analysis of the prison system, especially
capital punishment, and describes how through sustained collaboration with
Stanley Tookie Williams and Anthony Ross he evolved on death row from a
high school dropout into an accomplished writer and student of the
humanities.
Champion describes his early life in Los Angeles and the allure for him of
the Crips street gang, his incarceration and experience in the U.S. prison
system, his life on death row, and his growth and struggle as a human
being. He also offers a critical analysis of the prison system, especially
capital punishment, and describes how through sustained collaboration with
Stanley Tookie Williams and Anthony Ross he evolved on death row from a
high school dropout into an accomplished writer and student of the
humanities.
Steve Champion talks about his memoir. This message was recorded before the book was published in 2012 as Dead to Deliverance
The Sacred Eye of the Falcon - Introduction
"Prison is, without a doubt, violent. It is a hard place to become whole and most who walk through the gates will leave shattered in some way. Tossed into such a miasmic environment, how we would survive would be solely up to us. Being thugs, criminals, and gang leaders, we were acclimated to the do-or-die approach and sustained our existence by brute force in this microcosm of madness. It was our way or no way. Inevitably our jingoistic stance would be our undoing.
As a result we ended up in the Adjustment Centre (solitary confinement). It is a place designed to emasculate a man's constitution, paralyze thoughts, perpetuate aggression, extinguish the spirit, and bury him beneath indeterminate time. Being in the Adjustment Centre put us at a crossroads -- the path of violence versus the path of redemption. Either we would continue to allow the predetermined conditions to manipulate our lives, or we would change the course. We chose to change...." read more.the-sacred-eye-of-the-falcon-lessons-in-life-from-death-row3230909.html
As a result we ended up in the Adjustment Centre (solitary confinement). It is a place designed to emasculate a man's constitution, paralyze thoughts, perpetuate aggression, extinguish the spirit, and bury him beneath indeterminate time. Being in the Adjustment Centre put us at a crossroads -- the path of violence versus the path of redemption. Either we would continue to allow the predetermined conditions to manipulate our lives, or we would change the course. We chose to change...." read more.the-sacred-eye-of-the-falcon-lessons-in-life-from-death-row3230909.html