American Inmate: the album

By Justin Rovillos Monson

A rigorous and defiant collection that subverts contemporary discourse and representations of incarceration, of hip-hop, and of Asian American culture and literature. 

Justin Rovillos Monson’s poetic voice is sharp and irreverent—improvisational yet thoughtful, musical, and tender, achieving a range of lyrical registers woven seamlessly throughout the book from the first to last poem.

Monson’s work challenges his readers with uncomfortable but essential, urgent, and necessary questions: What does it mean to be in the world and yet live apart from it? What happens to the minds and bodies of those locked away? What happens to the minds and bodies of their loved ones? How can America get free? Braiding personal narrative with contemporary rap lyrics and institutional language, Monson deepens the nuances and dimensions of and within Asian American poetics, prison poetics, and hip-hop poetics with his deft and experimental writing style. 

American Inmate speaks through cages, bars, walls, and borders, collapsing widespread misconceptions and stereotypes regarding incarceration, and shrinking the distance between readers on the outside and the complex interiority of an incarcerated human being. Sometimes slipping, sometimes soaring, sometimes laughing, sometimes dying, Monson’s fiery debut is a fresh, moving, elucidative work that will challenge readers to think more critically about the systems that govern our lives, to imagine with compassion and inclusivity, and to settle for nothing less than a truly free future that is liberatory for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888900420

Book preview

© 2024 Justin Rovillos Monson

Published in 2024 by

Haymarket Books

P.O. Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

[e-mail]

ISBN: 979-8-88890-042-0

Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com).

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation, Wallace Action Fund, and Marguerite Casey Foundation.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please email [e-mail] for more information.

Cover artwork, Aaron, from Composite of Knowledge © Samuel Rodriguez, published with permission from the artist.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Attention: Any likeness of stories or characters to real events or people in this book is entirely coincidental and/or a work of creative poetic documentation.

This isn’t for the shook ones.

It’s for my dogs in lockup, who have lived these words with me.

For my family, who has held me down and kept me up to the fullest.

For J, who walks with me.

: America. God bless you if it’s good to ya.

America, please take my hand, can you help me underst—*

: If I’m transformed by language, I am often crouched in footnote or blazing in title.

Where in the body do I begin?†

* Kendrick Lamar, XXX.

† Layli Long Soldier, Whereas

: I don’t know how to start this shit.*

: Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.†

* Nas, N.Y. State of Mind

† Ezra Pound, Cantos

TRACK LIST

Intro

Conjure Song

I.

Notes for If I Fade Away

Sophomore Homecoming

Ontology of God

Bodies of Water

He Says He’s Maddecent/The Vapors (JSTLKMVMT remix)

II.

You Must Learn to Climb

Ode to the Dozens Ending with Me & My Dogs

Institutional(ized) Elegy

At the End of the Day

Old School Tells Me

Warmer Now, Michigan Winter

AMERICAN INMATE

III.

Notes for If I Fade Away

Institutional(ized) Break-Up Poem Considering Another Dear John Letter After I Ask My Ex How It Felt When I Left & She Tells Me Like You Died but Were Still Alive & Dreams of Near-Death Flood Me

Notes for If I Fade Away

Institutional(ized) Pastoral

Education

Old School Tells Me

6 a.m. in Freeland, or Listening to Everybody Dies in the Day Room with a Decade Left on My Bid

Look at This Line:

The Judge Told Me, You Seem to Do Better in Chains

LOCKDOWN POETICS (JSTLKMVMT remix)

IV.

Prayer of the Squad

Pre-Sentence Investigation (JSTLKMVMT remix)

BIGTHANKS & MADLOVE

Terms for the Uninitiated

Liner Notes for the Real Ones

INTRO

featuring JAY-Z

I don’t know how I ended

up here. Yeah, actually I

know. I called it.I made myself

a dumb prophet & cuffed my own

wrists like a God who creates

& creates & createstoo

many worlds to wave his handor

whatever he believes he’s doing

over & grant the prayers

of his reckless children. He gets

mad because he gets shown up.He

fails at the feet of his

creations. I know how

I got here. When I first came

down they measured my criminal

mindset by sitting me down

in a small rooman office

giving me a battery

of statements: If my family

gets hurt then I feel the urge

to retaliate & some

people deserve to be punished.

That one I laughed at. I was told

to answer with agreementor

strong denial. & I must have passed.

My report read: THE INMATE HAS LOW

PROBABILITY OF REOFFENCE.

But a sentence is a sentence

& now it’s over a decade

with more to go & all my files

in a drawer full of other

men’s histories, so many

histories. Do you know

the stories Do you know who

I am Do you understand

what I am Can I tell you?

I’ll try to sing this broken

song & summon my tribeones

who will one day carry me

home & damn damn I know

it’s a