The Man Rewriting Prison from Inside

The New Yorker, June 27, 2021: The Man Rewriting Prison from Inside

“It would be easy to skim the back cover of “This Life,” the vital, inventive new novel by Quntos (pronounced “QUAN-tuss”) KunQuest, glean the fact that the author has, for the past twenty-five years, been incarcerated at Angola prison, in Louisiana, for a carjacking committed when he was nineteen, and presume that the book belongs to the genre of prison literature predominantly concerned with exposing to the world outside the horrors of the one within. There is a significant nonfiction tradition of these books. Piri Thomas’s “Down These Mean Streets” and “Seven Long Times” dealt with how incarceration effaces the humanity of its subjects. Sanyika Shakur’s “Monster,” which recounted his years as a Los Angeles Crip and his multiple stints in prison, graphically described routine violence and sexual assaults in the system. And Piper Kerman’s memoir, “Orange Is the New Black,” illustrated the material and moral costs of the war on drugs.”

Additional reading:

This Life on bookshop.org

BOMB, June 11, 2021: Quntos KunQuest