My time will come A memoir of crime, punishment, hope, and redemption

Review by Booklist Review

Readers may be familiar with author Manuel if they've read Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy (2014), which features some of Manuel's story as well as his poetry. In this memoir, Manuel shares his account of being tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole at the age of 13 for armed robbery and attempted murder. For the next 18 years he was kept in solitary confinement, rarely getting visitors and having no one to advocate for him. He formed an unlikely relationship with the woman that he shot, and while they sometimes didn't communicate for years at a time, she became one of his biggest allies, showing up to every hearing for support. But it wasn't until Stevenson (who provides a foreword) and his organization the Equal Justice Initiative stepped in that Manuel had a real chance at freedom. Manuel sprinkles his poetry throughout the book, and while there is a wish that a bit more of that lyricism leaked into the prose, his story is heartbreaking and hopeful and needs to be told.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

An ex-con reflects on the shocking crime and even more shocking sentence that blighted his life in this heart-wrenching debut. In 1990, the then 13-year-old Manuel shot young mother Debbie Baigrie during a street robbery in Tampa, Fla. Baigrie recovered, but Manuel was sentenced to life without parole. "That would be the last day my mother and I would touch," he writes. What followed was a harrowing, decades-long journey through Florida's prisons, where beatings and sprayings with irritant gases were routine. The situation deteriorated drastically after he was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement for infractions as minor as asking for clean sheets, and ended up being kept there for 18 years--a deranging ordeal that prompted him to cut and burn himself. But his story took an unlikely turn after a judicial rights group took up his case. He reconciled with Baigrie, leading to his release from prison in 2016. Manuel's account, told in prose and poetry, is gritty and unflinching ("I hear coughs and gaspings/ from multiple gassings./ And boots and fist against flesh"), and poignant throughout. The result is a gripping narrative about a man's struggle to prove his discarded existence still has meaning. This is a stunner. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

The literature on Black people in the U.S. prison system has often focused on the incarceration of adults and ignored the thousands of children who are housed in adult jails. In his memoir, Manuel, who is Black, provides a firsthand look at how the nation treats these children. In 1991, a 14-year-old Manuel was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for shooting a young woman during a robbery. His trial came in an era when politicians were promoting the superpredator theory, which predicted a rise in crime and violence from Black youth. Manuel spent his next 25 years in the Florida prison system, 18 of them in solitary confinement. The Equal Justice Initiative appealed his case and secured his release from prison in 2016. Manuel's book argues that the U.S. legal system is a weapon used against Black youth. It is also the story of a man who came of age behind bars and found refuge in reading and writing poetry. VERDICT Manuel provides a firsthand account of the U.S. prison system's inhumanity for minors, and he writes a compelling call for change. A raw look at the intersection of the U.S. legal system, racism, and trauma.--John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An unsparing memoir about the cruel, long-unexamined policy of sentencing juveniles to life in prison. Manuel's account is both heart-wrenching and uplifting. An impoverished, disturbed youth, he received a life sentence for a nonlethal shooting during a robbery attempt, and he spent 18 years in solitary confinement, starting at age 15. As legal activist Bryan Stevenson, who aided Manuel through his Equal Justice Initiative, notes in the foreword, "His abusive isolation was justified by misguided protocols and a devastating lack of understanding about adolescent development, mental health, or behavioral science. What happened to Ian is beyond cruel but sadly not unique." Manuel chillingly portrays his deprived upbringing in a high-crime Tampa neighborhood. "I hurt someone very badly during a time in my life when I was blinded by my own hurt," he writes. Although pressured by older boys, the author was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 14. The prosecutor, he writes "was advancing a prevalent view at the time about boys of color"--that they were "super predators." Manuel vividly captures the terror of an adolescent thrust into adult incarceration and the added trauma of solitary confinement. He portrays the prison bureaucracy as arbitrary in its amplification of punitive measures, including routine beatings and tear-gassings. While in prison, the author began corresponding with the woman he'd shot, who ultimately forgave him. During his time in solitary, writing poetry helped maintain his sanity, and his sharp verse punctuates his narrative. In 2006, EJI reached out to Manual as part of an effort to overturn the life sentences of 73 children for nonhomicide crimes. The EJI, writes the author, "sought to base its case on the unconstitutionality of cruel and unusual punishment…a Hail Mary pass, as I saw it." Surprisingly, the Supreme Court concurred, leading to Manuel's release. "The world was all before me now," he writes, "but what exactly did that mean?" A disturbing, vital, necessary eyewitness addition to debates about the mass incarceration epidemic in the U.S. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1. My story has been told many times. you can read it in police files and court records, case notes and daily logs. The story of my birth, for example, told by a judge sentencing my mother to prison soon after my arrival in this world. And there's the story of that day when I was five, in the case notes of a social worker who drove me to a foster home and then, a few days later, drove me back to the projects, to the room I had shared with my abuser. The story of my childhood was told multiple times by juvenile probation officers who found me to be a problem best managed inside the walls of institutions. In the illustrious space--cold and intensely bright in my memory--of an adult courtroom, it would be the robed and sober voice of a judge who would foretell my death when I was thirteen. Relying on the stories of police officers, lawyers, and other accomplished professionals, he would send me to Florida State Prison, never to be released. As I said, my story has been told many times and by highly regarded experts in their fields. But today, if you'll bear with me, I would like to try to tell it to you myself. I have reason to believe the experts may be wrong about me. You see, today, thirty years later, I am neither in prison nor dead. In the stories told of my life, each begins with a crime. A crime by my mother against a neighbor, crimes against me, crimes committed by me. My stories are defined by legal codes and diagnostic categories. To tell you the truth, I struggle to shake these, to describe myself to you as I am, in all that I am. My sense, though, is that this is an experience true to millions of people who, like me, happened to be born into poor neighborhoods at a time in history when the intervention of choice is arrest and incarceration--even for mothers of infants, even for young children. I would like not to begin my story as the experts have done, with the story of a crime. But that is, in fact, the reality of this life. So I will begin with the story of the worst thing I have ever done, the crime I was sentenced to die in prison for. But I begin here not because, as the experts have said, this defines me. I begin here because I hurt someone very badly during a time in my life when I was blinded by my own hurt. And I want to admit to it. I want to state the truth of it. I think I owe it to her. And to the child that I was. I think we need to speak about harm, what we've done, what's been done to us, because that is what will open doors, what will air out and begin to heal the wounds we carry and have caused. And that is what will allow for new stories to begin to be told. I am telling you my story today because I want to tell a story of hope and meaning, of being one among a human family. # I shot Debbie Baigrie on July 27, 1990. I was thirteen and, along with a group of older boys, I was trying to rob her and the man who was walking her to her car. He, of course, was walking her to her car out of concern for her being a woman, alone at night, in a parking lot. My friends and I were the embodiment of his reasons for concern and I believe that night I only confirmed any beliefs he had about kids like me. At the time, my mom and I were homeless, staying with a family friend in the housing projects I had called home most of my life. Central Park Village had been a prosperous, entrepreneurial black community before I was born. But after deadly riots and looting there in 1967, the neighborhood had fallen on hard times. It was now a complex of run-down, low-rise buildings, riddled with poverty, gang violence, drugs, and crime. Because Mom had let the rent on our place fall behind, she and I were staying with a lady known to me as Aunt Louise, though she was no relation of ours. During my childhood, Central Park Village was a place of comings and goings, among family, friends, and acquain­tances; the place was full of people like us--roamers. # Guns were not new to me. When I was eleven, my friend Marquis and I had gone jacking, committing our first crimes together--robbing people, seventy-five cents here, two dollars there--only to be arrested. The gun we had brandished turned out to be an old, rusty, empty Colt M1911, the standard-issue sidearm of the U.S. Armed Forces from 1911 to 1986. Toward the end of that school year, during a conflict I had with a classmate, Marquis's cousin had pulled the gun out, pointed it at my opponent, and insisted that I fight him. The gun I would end up using to shoot Debbie was a .32 revolver. On the night of the crime, I met up with Marquis, who was fourteen at the time, and two older boys from the neighborhood and we walked downtown. Downtown Tampa was my stomping ground for a couple of years. I knew where police cars were stationed; where it was too crowded to pull off a robbery; where it would be unlikely for us to get caught. We continued downtown, searching for the right place at the right time, but I was nervous. Marquis was stern in a friendly way: "Man, Jim-Jim, look it done turned nighttime and we ain't done nothing yet. The next people we come across, we jacking, whether it's too open or not." Everybody agreed. We didn't have far to go before an opportunity presented itself: as we were walking across the parking lot, we turned to see a white man and woman, leaning against a car, rapt in conversation. One of the boys cooked up a plan on the spot. "Jim-Jim, I'm gonna go over and ask 'em for some change. When you see one o' dem reach for dey money, do your thing." "All right," I said. Marquis and the other boy stood right behind me. "Do one of y'all have change for a twenty?" the boy asked. I thought I heard either the man or the woman say yes. At the top of my lungs I yelled, "It's a jack, y'all, give it up," pointing the revolver at them. The woman stared at the gun and screamed, which startled me. Before I knew it I had pulled the trigger and she took off, running. # TAKE IT BACK Her mouth opens as she inhales her scream. The bullets are reloaded because the trigger was never squeezed. We're back at the start when we first asked for change. And her face is the same because she never felt that pain. He isn't on his knees--looking me in my eyes. Like I'm the last thing he'll see for the first and final time. The song self-destruction isn't resounding in my mind. We're just standing at the scene. Before it became a crime. If I could see into the future. Sitting on that porch on India. When my codefendants came to visit. I'd've chosen to stay with Lydia. I'm back in Central Park. Two-story apartment building. Never knowing where I'm going . . . Excerpted from My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption by Ian Manuel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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