Letters to an Incarcerated Brother: Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones

by Hill Harper

  The prison cell does not have to be a cell of isolation. It depends on how you see that prison cell, and more importantly, how you see yourself. I was unjustly incarcerated in the 1970s as a member of North Carolina’s Wilmington Ten. Throughout my time in prison, I never allowed myself to feel separated or isolated from the civil rights movement or from our people’s movement to gain freedom, justice, and equality.

  When you are incarcerated, don’t just serve time; make time serve you.

  Human beings adapt or adjust, but remember, dear Brother, that you are not the prison cell. You are in the cell, but you are not the cell. The container or boundary that we may face in life—whether we’re in prison or what’s called the “outside world”—can only confine us if we allow it to. You have to be aware that at the end of the day, it is you who decides the quality of your life.

  Prayer and meditation are important while you are incarcerated, but study is also important. Study yourself and know yourself, and study your environment and those around you. You should also express yourself. The best expression in life is self-expression, and to that end, you should keep a diary. Believe me, every day of your life during prison confinement, you should express not only how you feel but what you are learning from this experience. Transformation can take place even in a steel box, because transformation takes place first in one’s consciousness. If you want to change the world, you first have to think about how you see the world. Changing the world starts first by changing yourself and changing your own consciousness.

  Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. taught me so much when I worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. King told all of us staff people in SCLC never to become bitter, because bitterness only distorts the beholder. You may feel that the world has wronged you, and that may be true. Or you may have wronged yourself. But it is not the wrong that you should focus on. Instead, focus on how to make the situation better and how to make it right for yourself, even while you’re incarcerated. Self-improvement starts there.

  It’s a mistake to say, “Well, I’m gonna get better when I get out.” You can get better while you’re in.

  It’s a mistake to say, “Well, I’m gonna get better when I get out.” You can get better while you’re in. While I was incarcerated in North Carolina, I enrolled myself in Duke University and got a master’s of divinity magna cum laude. It was not easy; I don’t want anyone to think that it was easy. But I mention it because you have to set high goals in life, even while you’re inside a prison cell. And then you must strive. Rather than let your confinement adjust you, you have to adjust the contours of your confinement. You can’t move the steel cell bars, but you can move how you think through those bars and not allow your consciousness to be confined.

  I never felt alone while I was in prison because I stayed in constant touch with my family. You should also stay in touch with your loved ones. Loneliness is a sign that you feel isolated, but I want to encourage you. One lesson I learned while I was in prison was never to let the forces of my confinement break my spirit. Keep your spirit strong. What I mean by “your spirit” is your inner essence—not only what you think about, but your soul, your vibration, how you see the world, and your aspirations.

  Yes, you can have aspirations while in prison, but plan how to execute them. Study is very important. Prepare yourself and read everything you can. If they allow you to have a newspaper, don’t just read your favorite section; read everything. Words are very important. Reading, writing, studying, and reflection are all part of the universal process of self-development. Self-preparation and self-preservation are important too, because you preserve yourself by preserving others. You help yourself by helping others. You expand your vision by extending the grace that God has given you and the blessings that you see. To sum up, I want to encourage anyone reading this letter to not just serve time but make time serve you.

  Yours,

  Dr. Benjamin Chavis

  LETTER 21

  Straying

  Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease, but an error in judgment.1

  —Philip K. Dick

  My Brotha,

  I can’t even front on how much your letter put me out. Once again, almost three weeks without a sign that you’re alive and breathing, fam. Then I get your letter, and to be perfectly honest, it set me off—from a partly selfish point of view. I kept wondering how much of what happened was my fault. I kept thinking, “What have I done to this dude?” I kept thinking. “Obviously, I’m not helping.”

  It never would have occurred to me that you’d backslide into smoking weed out of fear of having a deficiency in assets after I wrote you my reactions to your chart. I thought you could handle it. If you reread my last letter carefully, you’ll see that I truly believe you have a lot going for you. As I said, your lack of options is environmental, which means it’s not permanent unless you decide it is. I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that worrying about something like that was going to drive you into a bout with contraband.

  Now I get the picture, Brotha. Just like your Yvette, you figured staying high is a way of avoiding anger about your aunt, anxiety about the future, and everything else. You felt like I was asking too much of you by wanting you to take an honest assessment of yourself, right? And you were worried about being pressured to jump into a gang again, especially since your cellie Sandro is an OG in one of the Nations, right?

  What was it you said? “I’d never get involved with that stuff on the street, Hill, but in here, lots of things are upside down. Having control over some drugs is a chance for a possible power play in the future, when you could end up needing that power most.” So you’ve decided to set yourself up as a drug middleman for quick money, and you’re numbing your guilt about what you’re doing by staying high.

  Even if I was in favor of the dealing—which I certainly am not—I’d tell you what any idiot on the street knows: Never get high on your own supply. A dealer’s job is getting others hooked. (Don’t think that’s a business strategy I admire them for.) But you yourself are not developing any kind of business plan here. You’re looking for a quick fix, some quick assets. I can barely believe some of this, it’s so scatterbrained. Let me make sure I got this right. Becoming an in-house drug dealer is your well-considered plan for the future?

  It pains me terribly to say this, but I don’t want to hear from you until you’ve dropped this weak-ass plan. What sense does it make? I’m not qualified to mentor somebody who’s high all the time or involved in any way with illegal substances. So this may be my last letter.

  THE HYPE MAN

  One more thing before I sign off, Brotha. Are you hip to the term hype man? You probably are. It’s an old hip-hop term for the man on the mic who backs up the MC. He hypes up the crowd and provides a kind of texture to the main rapper’s words. At certain points, the hype man puts his own two cents in, which keeps the rhythm going and adds an occasional new layer. The back-and-forth between the MC and his hype man is really based on the old call-and-response style of music that you can trace through the blues all the way back to Africa.

  Hype men have been doing their thing for years, in fact. You know Flavor Flav. He was Public Enemy’s hype man early on. Even Jay-Z started off as a hype man for Jaz-O and Big Daddy Kane before he came into his own. Tupac himself started off that way for Digital Underground. Hip-hop experts (including my friend Lupe Fiasco) consider Busta Rhymes’s hype man, Spliff Star, to be the greatest hype man ever. Well, I wanna be your Spliff Star, your Flavor Flav. Will you let me be your hype man? You know, have your back? Do you trust me enough to let me be there for you, for this journey we are about to go on together?

  You may think the hype man is just the “second fiddle,” but to most rappers, achieving synergy with the hype man is what makes the act. When a dude’s head is in the right p
lace, he understands that success requires an ally, a hype man. A good hype man is the most important resource, or asset, a rapper can have.

  We all have the capacity to live phenomenal, unreasonably happy lives, lives of impact and legacy, but we can’t do it alone.

  All hype men and all rappers understand this. They’ve spoken out and said so. For example, when Eminem’s hype man Proof was shot and killed at a Detroit club, Eminem asked Mr. Porter to fill his shoes. Mr. Porter made it clear that the role of hype man is something that comes with a lot of responsibility and he was afraid he couldn’t live up to expectations.

  Any rap fan can tell you that Porter’s commitment to Eminem won out, and even though Porter wondered if he was really capable of bringing it to the table, he just had to. He said:

  Em is like my brother. So it’s like, if my big brother was hurt and he couldn’t take care of my mother or something like that, I would have to do that, and he would expect that of me. And it was the same thing with Em. I didn’t think twice, because I wanna have his back like he always had my back. And I was like, Who else is gonna do it? It didn’t make sense any other kind of way. Me and him have been around each other for years, before all of the—where he is right now.2

  Read that carefully, man, because there it is in Black and white: Every successful plan requires a loyal ally. And I feel that way about you, Brotha. If you’ll turn your back on the drug thang, I’m willing to play your hype man for a while, but only if you value me like Eminem values his hype man. I’m gonna try everything in the book to get you back into the game and help you stay in it, if you let me. I’m gonna be in your ear and in your head reminding you of one essential truth: We all have the capacity to live phenomenal, unreasonably happy lives, lives of impact and legacy, but we can’t do it alone.

  I’ll be behind you as you move from being a passive participant in your life to an active one. I’ll be there as you go and take control, move forward, make a difference. In letters and when we talk on the phone, I’ll show you the way to overcome your micro-quits—those little, barely noticeable strategies of giving up that, strung together, mean failure. I’ll share lessons from people who have risen to meet challenges large and small, who have achieved their goals by mustering the courage, the will, and the grit it takes to succeed. I’ll give you the tools you need to achieve a brilliant life.

  I’ll give them to you, but you need to take them and use them. There’s no backing down, no telling yourself it’s too hard or scary or saying you don’t feel like it today and you’ll take a break and pick it up later, or deciding you’d rather get high. No! This is now. If you don’t take control now, you’re letting more of your life slip away.

  I’ll do everything I can to motivate you, my man. I’ll be the one who’s saying, “You can do it! You can make it happen! You can win!” But you have to keep one thing in mind. Whatever I say, whatever encouragement I offer, can’t be more than “cheerleading” or hype. Cheerleading and hype are wonderful gifts from a friend because they pump up the energy level. They increase the possibility that you’ll have the stamina for your long journey. Having people cheering for you is important, but cheering doesn’t break tackles; you have to run the ball. It doesn’t give you the playbook, either. You need a playbook. You need a system. That’s what a coach is for, and that’s what mentors are for: to help you develop your playbook. That’s what they are there for—to help you.

  So which is it—dealing and sniffing, or working with your hype man? Just say the word, and say it soon.

  Peace,

  Hill

  START BREAKING TACKLES

  P.S. I’m enclosing a letter from someone in the music biz who knows a lot about spiritual surrender. I mentioned you to Russell Simmons the other day, and he wanted to reach out to you.

  Dear Brother,

  As a person who believes in spiritual practices, first I go to what happens on the inside as a way to evolve into a more healthy physical condition. The environment is always going to affect you, but you choose a lot of the environmental forces. For example, you can be in the ghetto, but you can also be in the church. You can be in the ghetto but also be in meditation. You can surround yourself with elements that can draw you out, but your job is to look inward.

  Just like freedom when you’re out of prison, freedom while you’re in prison comes from personal and spiritual freedom. You can be free while you’re in jail, just as you can be locked up while you’re on the street. There are people in prison who don’t suffer, and there are people on the streets who do. This is a choice that each individual has to make. Of course it’s easier to make this choice while you’re surrounded by people who are happy and free. But you can see people who appear to be more successful or happy out in the world but who are doing things that lead to suffering, and they can suck you in too. You have to make the choice.

  You can be in the ghetto, but you can also be in the church.

  The nature of spiritual evolution is simple. If you find yourself on a train going the wrong way, you get up, go to the other side of the tracks, and go the other way. This is how an individual has to treat his own life. Despite what the friends and the sheep are doing, find different friends who are going the other way on the tracks. Or if there aren’t a lot of people available, find it within your heart, from the inside out, to move in the right direction. The person who is locked up has to look inside in order not to promote a cycle of more suffering.

  People say, “That’s bullshit. I’ve heard that before.” But I’m not making this up. It’s in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the yoga sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhist scriptures. Every person who sought to relieve the suffering of humankind promoted the same steps, and every one of them was revered because their wisdom changed the lives of so many.

  You have to learn that late-night drinking is a headache, but early-morning meditation is a freedom. Until people do enough meditation, they still have doubts that it isn’t true or they think there’s a shortcut. “If I just cut these corners, then I’ll be better off.” Anyone who gains faith in the truth lives by it, but you have to gain faith from experience, from actually doing it. Even if you find yourself in prison at age thirty-six or forty, at any minute you can make a change. It’s not like “As soon as I get a shot” or “As soon as I get freedom.” You have to start to create a different mind-set when you’re in prison. In fact, there’s no greater place to begin, because that’s where you have time alone to learn to look inside.

  I just wrote a book on meditation because I’ve seen its effects on the homeless, on people coming home from war, on people in prisons. I talk about mantra-based meditation, using the mantra rum. You sit and be patient, and repeat the word rum in your mind. Or you can inhale on let and exhale on go. At first your mind will go crazy like a monkey in a cage, but if you’re patient, the mind will settle. Your mind will try to trick you into moving, but if you set an alarm for twenty minutes, in a few minutes you’ll say, “Oh, I’m meditating.” And then your mind will settle even more and you will transcend those thoughts even more.

  There is no trick to meditation; you just have to have patience. If you make a regular habit of it, you find that what’s outside is less important. Every thought doesn’t have to affect your nervous system or create emotion or bad energy. When you become the watcher, which is the person who meditates, you see the world in real time and things move more slowly. The fluctuations and the noise that the mind creates—which is the only cause of suffering—dissipates. When the mind is settled, there is nothing but bliss. The things that you think are causing great stress are actually very small.

  Meditation is a great gift for people who are incarcerated because you can do it anywhere, and stillness is the thing that promotes the most happiness. So this is my gift to you, Brother—the gift of meditation. Use it and you will become a happier, more peaceful person.

  Yours,


  Russell Simmons

  THE RETURN

  LETTER 22

  Forgiving

  The reward of the evil is the evil thereof, but whosoever forgives and makes amends, his reward is upon Allah.

  —Koran 42:40

  The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  Hey, Brotha,

  It’s about midnight in L.A., and it’s a little more than forty-eight hours since I got back from New York. But now I’m flying back to New York yet again to film some exteriors for CSI: NY. Just settled into my seat on the flight I’ve become all too familiar with, the red-eye from Los Angeles to New York. It leaves Los Angeles around eleven thirty P.M. and then arrives around seven thirty A.M. the next day in the Big Apple. Guess it’s obvious why they call it the “red-eye,” because your eyes tend to look bloodshot when you land, since you’ve slept so little on the plane. I never get any ZZZs, so I decided to write you a letter.

  Taking off and climbing to thirty-five thousand feet, seeing the glinting lights on the ground get smaller and smaller, I imagine what you are doing right now. Are you asleep? Or are you under your covers with a rigged LED light reading a new book? So I pull out your latest letter, and damn. Shit, man, I guess when it rains, it pours. That letter you got from your locked-up brother, Vernon, must have come as a surprise. Did you even know Vernon was in a federal pen now?

  I totally get how hearing from him made you feel. I know it hurts, but I actually think it’s a good sign. I’m gonna remind you of what you said about it in your letter: