c.2025, One Signal Publishers
\n$29.00
\n288 pages<\/p>\n
By Terri Schilichenmeyer
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/p>\n
The seams are textbook straight. You made sure of it.<\/p>\n
There\u2019ll be no need for a thread-ripper for you. No, you planned before you picked up a needle, and you were careful with each poke of the thread. A few snips here, a quick tack there, and you\u2019ll be done. As in the new book Stitching Freedom<\/em> by Gary Tyler (with Ellen Bravo),<\/strong> this project almost took a lifetime.<\/p>\n Growing up in St. Rose, Louisiana, Gary Tyler tried to avoid major trouble.\u00a0 He says he was often the victim of racism in school, though, and he didn\u2019t put up with it so he ran afoul of authority now and then. On the day he was suspended for \u201ccausing problems in the classroom,\u201d he wasn\u2019t worried; he considered it another day off.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t know that it would be his last day of freedom for more than forty-one years.<\/p>\n After wandering around awhile, visiting with friends and a cousin, Tyler went back to the school that day, where an altercation on a bus ended in the death of a white teenager. Tyler was there, but he wasn\u2019t involved; witnesses confirmed it, before telling different stories at trial, then recanting. Still, he was arrested for the murder, taken to jail, tried, and sent to Angola Prison, sentenced to die by electric chair.<\/p>\n Still a teenager, Tyler was careful who he befriended in Angola, keeping away from trouble and finding mentors in the OGs who\u2019d been there awhile. With their guidance, he learned things he hadn\u2019t known, legal terms, how to find the right lawyer, how to raise money and get by. They corrected his grammar and his thinking. They taught him how to present himself. He learned the value in service, and he became a prison seamster.<\/p>\n Tyler says he knew prison would be bad, but despite that he knew other young men who\u2019d been there, he underestimated how bad it would get. And he never would\u2019ve believed he\u2019d find men who\u2019d become his family and who\u2019d save his life.<\/p>\n Crime features big in the news lately, doesn\u2019t it? You could be forgiven if you\u2019re feeling fatigue from it, but check out Stitching Freedom<\/em>. Here, the crime is racism.<\/p>\n Surprise: you won\u2019t get the sense that author Gary Tyler needed a halo; no, he admits to being a bit of a rascal sometimes, with rather typical teen behavior before his incarceration. This honesty stretches: he also presents believable, abundant evidence that despite his proximity to where the crime occurred, he didn\u2019t do what he was accused of doing. Through that account and beyond, he shows readers how racism kept him down, and how he kept his hopes up and his head high.<\/p>\n Stitching Freedom<\/em> isn\u2019t scary or particularly scared-straight-ish, and there\u2019s a bit of humor at the end in Tyler\u2019s post-prison memories of learning about modern life. That means you can read his story yourself, and feel comfortable giving it to a teenager who needs it. Find this book, and then watch your time get all sewn up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" c.2025, One Signal Publishers $29.00 288 pages By Terri Schilichenmeyer The Truth Contributor The seams are textbook straight. You made sure of it. There\u2019ll be no need for a thread-ripper for you. No, you planned before you picked up a needle, and you were careful with each poke of the thread. A few snips here, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-18148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18150,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18148\/revisions\/18150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18148"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=18148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}