Book Review: A Question of Freedom by R. Dwayne Betts

Why Did You Do It, Son?

Forget Stephen King! As a father and mentor, A Question of Freedom by R. Dwayne Betts is the scariest book I’ve read in a long time. Part cautionary tale, part story of redemption, A Question of Freedom is a riveting memoir about “a moment of insanity” that resulted in a nine year prison sentence for the author in the Virginia penal system.

The memoir starts with the poem “Shahid Reads His Own Palms,” written by Betts, which makes it immediately clear that the author possesses a keen literary imagination. Then, the first chapter, ”Thirty Minutes,” describes his arrest and descent into prison life in chilling detail.  From his dehumanizing entry into prison life, “My state number. It was a five digit number I soon learned meant more than my name,” we witness the author, who was sixteen at the time of his arrest, beginning his adaption to his changed circumstances:

On my lips and in my head was the start of a new language defined by the way words changed meanings, all because I’d decided to make a man a victim. New words like inmate, state number and juvenile certification had crept into my vocabulary (6).

A far cry from when he was taking cases such as “Pre-calculus, physics, honors English, AP U.S. history, French 4 and computer math” as an honors student and class treasurer at Suitland High School (55).

With no prior arrests or any trouble with the law, Betts is transformed from a sixteen year old kid who wears glasses (and braces for Chrissakes!) into a “menace to society.” The presiding judge tells him, “I don’t have any illusions that the penitentiary is going to help you, but you can get something out of it if you want to” (79).

As he continues his journey through the penal system, the facts surrounding his case are revealed. Betts was arrested for carjacking: “Which is the stupidest crime you can commit. There’s no money in it. Just glorified joyriding” (201). This is not the only twist in his story:

Two years before my crime I read Nathan McCall’s Makes Me Wanna Holler, the kind of book black women give their sons when teachers begin to call home too often, or when the police show up at the door to give a warning or when the word truancy becomes a word to be said at the dinner table (94).

Makes Me Wanna Holler—one of the books I’ve used in mentoring-- should have been a deterrent. But it wasn’t. Plus, it wasn’t the only media to which Betts had been exposed. At the time of his arrest he admits, “There were titles of movies and books on my mind: Shawshank Redemption; American Me; Blood In, Blood out; Makes Me Wanna Holler; Racehoss; The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (3-4).

Coupled with his honesty, one the most disturbing aspects of Betts’s story is his naiveté: “I thought it was possible to confess to carjacking and have a court let you walk away with a my bad” (13). As he later confesses, “Maybe there is no real why, no one definitive answer to give when they ask “Why did you do it?” After eight years in prison answers didn’t come any easier” (232).

What’s shocking—Betts is old enough to be my son—is that his crime and incarceration did not have to happen. Dwayne was a good student with a loving mother who did everything to make sure that he would never suffer the fate that he did. Still it happened. Armed with a gun—he had never held one before—Dwayne entered a mall and looked “for someone to make a victim” (65).

If Dwayne Betts, honors student and class treasurer, can be seduced into committing a criminal act, what hope can I have for my children and my mentees who have yet to realize their talents?

Even though Betts says the “answers don’t come any easier,” I hope I will have the opportunity to ask him the question when he comes to the African American Read In at the Lehman Theater, Miami Dade College, on February 4, 2013. Until then, I’ll be praying a little harder for my children---all of them.

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Live webcast of R. Dwayne Betts at Miami Dade College, North Campus on February 4, 2013 at 10:00 a.m.:  http://www.mdc.edu/north/live/

Here’s a video clip of Mr. Betts from C-SPAN’s video library: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/306453-8

BookTV: Dwayne Reginald Betts, "A Question of Freedom": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD_iLRYYOfE

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A Question of Freedom by R. Dwayne Betts

At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts—a good student from a lower-middle-class family—carjacked a man. He had never held a gun before, but with this first offense he’d committed six felonies within minutes. A Question of Freedom chronicles Dwayne’s years in prison, as he reflects back on his crime and makes a decision about how a “moment of insanity” would—or would not--define him. This book is about a quest for identity, one that guarantees a young man’s survival in a hostile environment. As Dwayne writes, “It’s the story of the thirty minutes it took me to shatter my life into the memory of one cell after another, and the cost of walking away from a bad idea a minute too late.” But finally, and most poignantly, this story is about the many ways that books and a passion for writing helped a young man find his way back to the life he’d lost. In 2011 Betts was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship to Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies and continues to share his story of empowerment and resilience all over the nation.