Marlon Peterson: On Organic Advocacy, Abolitionist Writing, Undoing Trauma, and “Bird Uncaged”
Marlon Peterson is well-known in justice policy and advocacy circles. A native of Brooklyn, Marlon grew up during the height of the War on Drugs, stop-and-frisk policing, and tough-on-crime legislation in New York City. His adolescence and a decade of incarceration are documented in his new debut memoir, Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song.
Marlon, a friend and colleague of mine, sat down with me to talk about unforeseen abolitionism, America’s ethos of toxicity, musing at parties, and his new book.
Evie Lopoo: Marlon, it’s so good to be in community with you, thanks for doing this. First thing: Why did now feel like the right moment to share your story? How did COVID shape how you were thinking about writing it, or give you time and space to write about it?
Marlon Peterson: For sure. I finished the book during COVID last year, the end of Summer 2020, or the very beginning of the Fall. And, you know, it was a four-year process. At some point (COVID-19) helped because I could make use of the time afforded to me during quarantine. It gave me some space away from other work and some time to think it through. In some sense, that is how I took advantage of the tragedy of the pandemic.
Evie Lopoo: How has it felt having your writing out in the world? How are you feeling? Give me some general reactions.
Marlon Peterson: I am still feeling it, right? It’s been two months since the book was released, and, thus far, the reactions I’ve gotten from all over the place have been good. The work is touching people in the ways I intended, and, in some ways, it’s touching people in ways I did not expect. I feel like I had this book in me for a while, and it feels really relieving to have finally got it out of me. If you are a writer, like singers or rappers or what have you - those people who use their voice to entertain and make music - it’s not just something you have to produce, but also something you have to get out of you. So I am happy I got that out of me.
And also, I mean I am open to the possibilities of what the book will do. I kind of think - the mere thought that there’s a book of mine that exists in places I have never imagined, places I’ve never been to, places I’ve never traveled to. I mean the book is at the Brooklyn Museum! As someone from Brooklyn who has spent time at the Museum, that’s pretty amazing.
Evie Lopoo: Right, and your writing is so deeply personal, and you share some traumatic experiences in your work. Were there moments where that felt healing, or moments where that felt like you were reopening old wounds? How did you leave space for yourself during writing and the virtual book tour to process?
Marlon Peterson: Writing the book, there was healing that came from it and there were triggers and re-traumatization. Everything - I worked through every single emotion possible while writing this book. Every possible emotion, from extreme depression to extreme elation and everything in between. As you said, I touched on a lot of things, and memoir is hard because of that - you have to put things on paper that you have hidden in your mind. Once you put it on paper, you can’t hide it anymore.
Reflecting on it now that it is done, I can say, particularly with the book talks I have done, I am thankful for the people who have been in conversation with me during the virtual book tour. I had no preconditions for any of the conversations, you know, I never said “you can’t ask me this” or “I don’t want to talk about this.” For the most part, I was open - I wrote a book, ask me what you are going to ask me! (laughs) If I didn’t want you to ask me about this, I wouldn’t have written it.
And everyone has been very sensitive to how they ask me about certain things. Rarely, almost never, did I feel like people were insensitive or voyeuristic. People were very sensitive. As an author, you are always wary about how you talk about what you put on paper. There were all these anxieties around how I thought people would react to the things in the book. I wish my talks were in person, because the zoom element means that the only questions I am asked are from the moderator and the chat box, which isn’t the same as audiences coming up to a mic or shouting out or whatever. That’s the only downside to this process thus far.
Evie Lopoo: Well, it was announced yesterday that New York is fully reopening. Are you hoping to do some in-person events in the late Summer or early Fall?
Marlon Peterson: I want to. I also would love to do some in other parts of the country. I am going to try to do one in California - L.A. - in the Summer. We’ll see.
Evie Lopoo: There are several moments in the book where you are able to relate your personal narrative to a larger framework of what mass incarceration meant and looked like in working class, heavily policed, predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods while you were growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Can you talk a little bit about how you were able to build that bridge between your personal life and larger political implications? Or, did this bridge happen seamlessly while you were writing?
Marlon Peterson: Hm. I think for me it was probably a bit more natural. I’ll say it was intentional. I am someone who understands systems and how they impact communities, so it was necessary for me to attach my experience to a larger political conversation. I also think that is part of our work as writers - a writer’s experience is not in a vacuum. The people, the subjects, whatever, are not in a vacuum from the larger society. I think it does a disservice when we detach these larger societal issues from the individual. So it was intentional for me - I felt like it didn’t make sense if I didn’t do that. If I didn’t do that, I’d just be talking about me, and talking about me in a somewhat dishonest way. I’d be talking about things that are happening in the neighborhood in a dishonest way. And, possibly, it’d seem like I was just blaming myself or blaming the people in my circle. It’s important that we coach our experience in the larger context. When we don't do that, it makes our personal experiences nonsensical.
Evie Lopoo: Absolutely, yeah. I’d like to move to discussing some specifics in your book. In particular, some of the chapters have some of your poetry in them, which I loved, especially the poem in Chapter 10. It is untitled, but starts with the line Let me take my hoodie off. Are there moments when you lean into writing poetry versus prose? Why did you choose to incorporate both in your book? Talk me through what that looked like.
Marlon Peterson: I always say, I don’t consider myself a poet. Right? I’ve written poetry - I think every person at some point in their life has written poetry, and put it in a notebook somewhere. So that’s me. Every once in a while I’ll write some, but I by no means consider myself a poet. I included it - I needed to tell the story, particularly with the poem you mention, I was dealing with (controversy in) the Vassar in-prison student program. I wanted to tell the story in the book in the same way that I told my story in the moment. That poem was performed in prison, I performed that poem in front of a group of students. In the poem, there’s names of different people, right? And I had performed it in front of those people in that room.
Here’s the thing, when you think about activism or activists - and, I guess, that’s one of the titles I have - that’s not some sh*t I consider myself. I didn’t say I want to be an activist. There was just some sh*t happening, and I felt like I had to do something about it. The reason I put that poem in the book is because that poem was written as a direct affront to the (prison) administration. They had stationed a CO (correctional officer) in the room, and they were always threatening us (with reprimand). So I decided, I’m gonna say this in front of y’all. I am going to build up the solidarity of the people in the room. And so I guess that was my form of resistance. I don’t know, I also think putting the poem in the book was a message to people who are in programs in prisons.
And, I always want to drive the point home in an artistic way. People like poetry for the most part - it feels good, it rhymes (if it rhymes). I feel like, in the book, I tell stories in different ways, through letter writing, through talking to my younger self, through talking to the reader. So I wanted to engage different facets of my creative mind to tell the story.
Evie Lopoo: I also love that the chapter from which the poem comes deals with this idea of what it means to be a teacher versus a student, and the poem itself speaks to that. You also say in that chapter that during your time in prison, you acted as a disruptor, and then carried that spirit with you post-release. You still consider yourself to be a disruptor and advocate (and I wholeheartedly agree). So how does this book relate to that tradition and carry on the work that you were doing with college students while you were in prison? Do you think this book contributes to a type of educational disruption?
Marlon Peterson: As an interrupter, talking about my experiences as a young person (is important). It is the people who are in proximity to young people - particularly educators and caretakers - who might learn how to pay attention to young people in ways they hadn’t before (through learning my story). Hopefully, they won’t take things for granted that they might have before. That is the reason I write about my childhood in such emotional detail. How I was feeling then. I want people to know what young people are dealing with, and that the things they are feeling might confuse or surprise you.
That’s on one level, but I also want the book to be used - and I think it is already being used in this way - as a tool for the disruption of many things. A disruption of things that we tend to see as normal. I want people to use the book to question a lot of the systems we have in place, the utility of them and why we believe in them.
“Abolitionist’s freedom song,” like, I didn’t write the book to be an abolitionist book. We branded it that way (laughs), obviously, in the title. But the title was the last part of the book, this was not the title from 2017 - when I first started thinking about the book - up until I pressed “enter” on the final manuscript, that was not the title. Up until the very last few pages of the book, I didn't even use the word “abolition.” I guess what I am getting to is that I want people to question systems like policing and prison. And I give all this supporting evidence throughout the book - and I didn’t realize I was doing it until the end - to be like, “this is all the sh*t that’s going on, do police fix that sh*t?” All of the problems that I had, did police and prisons fix it? Does it really do it, does it really fix the things? Just question yourself. I’m not asking you to become a prison or police abolitionist, because that in and of itself is a politic, and you have a right to believe whatever politic. But just question why it is that people do believe in (these systems) and their politic in a rational way.
Evie Lopoo: Right, that in and of itself is such a radical way to educate. You know, you look at the school system, and you are taught how to memorize what the right answer is, not how to question things. Instead, you’re not giving people a “right” answer, per se, but asking people to be thoughtful and introspective. When you talk about abolition towards the end of the book, you write, “abolition means the undoing of America, not just the mere unraveling that happened in 2020.” Can you break that down a bit? Would you say that’s the core thrust of your book? You really do take us on this narrative journey that concludes with your discussion of abolition towards the end of your book. So what does that mean to you? What should it mean to readers?
Marlon Petereson: If folks read the book, get whatever you get out of it, but try to understand that throughout the book I was undoing myself. The first chapter of the book is called “Hiding,” and the last is called “Un-American and Free.” In some ways, I was modeling the process of trying to be a better person and healing from all of the sh*t.
When I think about the undoing of America, I want to show that the things we - Black and brown folks foremostly, but anybody not male, white, and cisgender - experience in this country. America performs toxicity over and over again, in all the ways, and that’s an understatement. And that’s the ethos of it - the ethos of our country. It’s not like (toxicity) is above the country, it is the country. I just saw last week that West Virginia is giving out guns as an incentive to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In the midst of wreckage from mass shootings and gun violence, we still believe in a weapon - and f@ck whatever sh*t about guns being used for protection and hunting - we believe in weapons more than anything else. We need an undoing, because that’s attached to the Bill of Rights and business - guns are one of our biggest exports. I’m using guns as an example because part of my work comes from the gun violence intervention space.
Our problem with gun violence in America is about much more than just a problem with people on street corners shooting each other. That is an issue, we need to stop shooting each other on street corners, we all know that - nobody’s saying we shouldn’t fix that. But that can never stop in this country because the ethos of this country is about shooting people. That’s what we f@cking do. So what I mean by the undoing of America is that we need to find ways to remove ourselves from the ethos of the country to create a better land that we live in. It requires more than just saying we need to create DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs. I am not knocking DEI programs, of course that’s good, we need to do all of that. But that ain’t the sh*t. We have a national pathology that we believe in, and that pathology is harming people. Not every nation on this earth was created by war. I just want that to land for a second. Not every nation on this earth was created by war. The reason I say that is because we believe nothing else, that mindset travels to all parts of the society, and anything other than that seems irrational, sadly. So when I was thinking about the undoing of America, I’m literally talking about uprooting the ethos of the land. The ethos is toxic.
Evie Lopoo: Thank you so much for that. I want to end on a much lighter note (laughs). There’s a common debate in the literary world about if writing comes from good habits, as in sitting down at the same time everyday and writing for a set amount of time, or if it comes from sparks of inspiration, like frantically jotting down notes when the occasion arises. So what do you think makes good writing? Does it come from habit and grit, or from muse and somewhat spiritual experience?
Marlon Peterson: I think any sort of artistry requires a level of commitment. That commitment can look like having a set routine, 5 in the morning, get your coffee, start writing. People do those things, but I didn’t have any of those things, right? Like I said earlier, I had this thing I needed to get out, and I knew I wanted to get it out now. So I was committed to that, which means I made time for it. I think it makes sense to have a schedule, particularly if you have a lot of things running and a busy life, it helps, so I am not going to knock that. As a writer and creator, you have to figure out what works for you. You have to figure out how to live out your commitment.
There’s parts of this book that I wrote at parties. Like, I didn’t actually have a laptop out with me, but - the end of the book was written in Ghana in the middle of a huge outdoor party event. Music playing, it’s hot as hell, people eating, drinking, dancing, all the things, and there was something I saw and I took out my phone and started writing it on my phone. Even in the middle of all of the stuff, right? That’s obviously not a routine, I don’t go to parties to write (laughs). But that’s me, the next book I write I may have more of a routine because I want the next thing to be better than the previous thing I did, so maybe I will need to do new things to live out that commitment. Ultimately, as a writer, you have to be committed to it and do whatever you need to do to live out that commitment to getting that thing out.
Read Marlon’s book, watch his million-plus-viewed TED talk, and listen to his DEcarcerated podcast.
Marlon Peterson is the principal of The Precedential Group, a social justice consulting firm. He is host of the Decarcerated Podcast, a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and a 2015 recipient of the Soros Justice Fellowship. Ebony Magazine has named him one of America's 100 most influential and inspiring leaders in the Black community. His TED Talk, Am I not human? a call for criminal justice reform, has over 1.2 million views. He contributed to Kiese Laymon's How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin's How We Fight White Supremacy. His writing has appeared in Ebony, The Nation, USA Today, Colorlines, and more. A graduate of New York University, he lives in Brooklyn and plays the steelpan during the summer.
About the Interviewer
Evie (Evangeline) Lopoo is a social science researcher, criminal justice advocate, and writer. She is a Project Manager for the Square One Project, housed at the Columbia University Justice Lab, in which capacity she works on international justice efforts and racial justice educational curricula. She is also working on a book manuscript about the history and current manifestations of probation and parole in the United States correctional system. You can find her policy publications at https://justicelab.columbia.edu/ and https://squareonejustice.org/ and her random thoughts at @EvieLopoo on Twitter. Evie is based in New York City.
