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... Mumia Abu Jamal describes his home, the hundred-year-old prison in Huntington County Pennsylvania in the introduction to his book Live From Death Row. The title is quite appropriate because Jamal wrote the book from his six-by-ten-foot cell on Pennsylvania’s death row. ... From Jamal’s cell come cries for revolution. ...
The first essay in Live From Death Row, “Teetering on the brink between life and death” outlines Jamal’s feelings about the United States Prison system and more specifically death row. ... ’ ‘Where do you think you’ll get that from? ... ‘From my TV! ... The essay comes across as a call for change in the United States prison system, from a man that has experienced it firsthand. ... The bias that comes from experiencing prison firsthand lends credibility to Jamal’s writing though. His essay is laced with personal accounts from his experience. ... He often uses case law from past judicial decisions to argue his points. ... When Live From Death Row was reviewed in the New York Times in 1995, Michael Anderson said: “Mr. ... As Jamal quotes Albert Camus at the start of “Teetering on the brink between life and death:” “For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months” (Jamal Live 3). ... Part of this is due to the fact that typewriters are not allowed, and as I learned in reading Jamal’s second book Death Blossom, he was punished for reading, and spent months in the hole for writing the essays that make up Live From Death Row. If a writer is not able to keep an archive of his works, it is impossible for him to keep from overlapping somewhat. ... This fact prevents critics from analyzing Jamal’s writing style, and leads most to making a judgment on his guilt or innocence. ... But Mumia Abu Jamal will continue to be a voice for change, albeit a very educated and eloquent one.
Approximate Word count = 1995
Approximate Pages = 8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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