My name is Charles Carpenter. My prison number is V08580. I’m currently incarcerated in Chuckawalla State Prison. I’m on my 22nd year of incarceration for second degree murder. I started off with a checkered past. I’ve been in and out of incarceration since I was 12 years old. I’m 54 years old now. I was involved in gangs early on. I had warped beliefs, and a lot of things that I did stems from unresolved trauma. Albeit, I made the choice to do what I did. My behavior, in a lot of cases was a symptom of my unresolved trauma. So today, I have managed to look within, inside myself, and make efforts to change the person that I was, change my core beliefs and my values.
So today, I have written and published five books. One is entitled Handcuff, which is an autobiography about my life. My next book is Colors of Oppression, which is a glimpse of my perspective of surviving prison life. And the third book that I wrote is called, Contradiction, the Unveiling of the Mask. And that’s the book that’s basically a guideline to the steps I took to step away from gang life. And my fourth book is called The Making of a Diamond. Making of a Diamond is about realizing your worth, your values, and understanding that anything is possible. My life is a metaphor. Just like a diamond starts off as a seemingly worthless piece of carbon until it goes through that refined process of heat and pressure. And then the diamond is formed, and at that time you realize the value. It was there all the time, but the diamond just highlights the value for everyone to see. So that’s a metaphor, pertaining to my life. The potential was there within me the whole time, but I didn’t realize it. So I had to go through this refining process of incarceration to understand that I am valuable. My last book is called The Anatomy of Urban Genocide. So, the Anatomy of Urban Genocide, is about my perspective on a lot of conditions being created within a lower socioeconomic area. So if you’d like to find out more information about my books, they are available on Amazon.com. This is Charles Carpenter. And feel free to contact me for any questions that you may have. Send me a letter or send me an email on the tablets. This is Charles Carpenter signing off.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
