...[an] uncommonly powerful memoir ... His memoir is strewn with words from others he read while in prison — Nelson Mandela, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Frederick Douglass ... Solitary is a profound book about friendship ... This story, which Woodfox has written with Leslie George, is told simply but not tersely. If it sometimes induces claustrophobia, well, it’s meant to. Very often the painful details, and the author’s own humanity in the face of them, start to make your chest feel too small ... If the ending of this book does not leave you with tears pooling down in your clavicles, you are a stronger person than I am. More lasting is Woodfox’s conviction that the American justice system is in dire need of reform.
a book that is wrenching, terrible, sometimes numbing, sometimes almost physically painful to read. You want to turn away, put the book down: Enough, no more! But you can’t, because after 40-plus years, the very least we owe Woodfox is attention to his story, however agonizing we find it ... [Woodfox’s] relentless account of four decades of injustice, imprisonment and brutality is difficult to read and difficult to write about — its moral power is so overwhelming. Every summary phrase that comes to mind is a cliche: 'a triumph of the human spirit,' 'a wholesale indictment of mass incarceration and the American criminal justice system,' 'inspiring,' 'a call to arms.' But in Woodfox’s case, the cliches all ring true ... Woodfox’s story makes uncomfortable reading, which is as it should be. Solitary should make every reader writhe with shame and ask: What am I going to do to help change this?
Solitary is a candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle of these years — as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country's prisons ... While Solitary is a call to banish solitary confinement in the U.S., the first third of the book is also an important record of how underprivileged communities are almost forced into crime ... Solitary is a timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.
... evidence of Woodfox’s extraordinary mental resilience in the face of relentless state cruelty. The pacing is brisk, with brief stops to reflect on the United States’ mass incarceration of black people, Woodfox’s black identity and his personal philosophy, much of it centred on the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program. Woven together, these strands form an indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system that should be read for generations ... What keeps the book humming along is Woodfox’s ability to make something good of his stifling surroundings.
... heart-rending ... Woodfox’s description of the lengths these men go to in order to know and care for one another in the near complete absence of physical contact or even face-to-face communication amounts to some of the most touching writing on platonic male friendship I have ever encountered ... 'We must imagine Sisyphus happy,' Camus famously wrote, and such a prompt is the ennobling virtue at the core of Solitary. It lifts the book above mere advocacy or even memoir and places it in the realm of stoic philosophy. Crucially, Woodfox is not a bitter man. He refuses to see himself as a victim. Ultimately, this allergy to self-pity allows him to grapple with the consequences and consolations of whatever agency — and dignity — can exist in even the most abhorrent and restricted circumstances.
Woodfox’s shocking memoir of his years in prison, mostly under solitary confinement, is a testament to the human spirit and a scathing indictment of the justice system ... Woodfox’s story reads like a prison diary and is unrelenting in its portrait of the day-to-day humiliations and racism experienced by Black prisoners ... Woodfox’s difficult story is a call to action for justice-system reform.
Though the author is obviously not an impartial source, that understandable bias mingles throughout the narrative with fierce intelligence and the author’s touching loyalty to fellow prisoners also being brutalized. Nearly every page of the book is depressing because of the inhumane treatment of the prisoners ... an important story for these times.
In this devastating, superb memoir, Woodfox reflects on his decades inside the Louisiana prison system ... The book is a stunning indictment of a judicial system ... This breathtaking, brutal, and intelligent book will move and inspire readers.
