Serving Time Too

A Memoir of My Son's Prison Years

By: Rosalind Boone Williams

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Paperback | 29 May 2019

At a Glance

Paperback
188 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.3 x 22.8 x 1.5

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Serving Time Too: A Memoir of My Son's Prison Years is the universally accessible story of a mother and son: what she knew about him; what she will never understand; how she helped him, and when she needed to let him go. But Rosalind Williams' memoir is unique because her unconditional love for Marell persisted after his conviction for murder. During his sixteen years in prison and for two-and-a-half years after his release, every aspect of Rosalind's life was affected by her fidelity to him and by the failures of a penal system tinged with racial and class inequities.

Rosalind tells a personal story with enormous significance to society. She is an unflinchingly fair, sometimes self-critical narrator who reflects upon the enticements of violence and crime, especially for African American young men, despite the values they are taught at home. Her experiences demonstrate the damage that crime and punishment inflict upon those good people who stand by loved ones during and after incarceration. This memoir will comfort anyone related to the 2.3 million people behind bars in the United States. Others will hear a call to reform and, more importantly, they will feel compassion for the offender's family, and the offender.

No other book in print takes Rosalind's perspective on the problems of crime and incarceration.

Industry Reviews

Serving Time Too reveals a mother's struggle to minimize the suffering and foster the moral growth of her incarcerated son while turning her fierce critical intelligence on the penal system and herself. This book offers comforting advice to the countless families of people in prison and is an eye-opener for the rest of us. -- Bell Gale Chevigny, Professor Emerita of Literature, Purchase College, State University of New York, editor, Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing
In Serving Time Too, Rosalind Williams recounts with overwhelming love and compassion the sixteen years her son, Marell, was incarcerated for murder. Accompanied throughout by her stalwart husband, James, and her understanding daughters, Kesia and Sidnee, Mrs. Williams never faltered in her focus on Marell's welfare as he endured cycles of total isolation and routine menial jobs in a series of correctional facilities and prisons throughout North Carolina. This masterful narrative, an unparalleled spiritual autobiography filled with vivid detail and judicious insight, is riveting from beginning to end. -- Patrick J. Samway, Professor Emeritus of English, St. Joseph's University, former literary editor, America.
A gripping account of a family tragedy told with eloquence and honesty, Rosalind Williams's Serving Time Too could be any parent's story in today's America. This is a compelling testimonial to the perseverance, faith, and love of a mother engaged in a desperate struggle to sustain her son enmeshed in the relentless cogs of the criminal justice system. -- William Leake Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Distinguished Professor of Literature, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, author, Slavery and Class in the American South

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