Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice

by Yusef Salaam, Yusef Salaam (Read by)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

One of the "Exonerated Five," Yusef Salaam tells a wrenching story of injustice and offers a humbling chronicle of survival, perseverance and coming through. That he has chosen to be a light in the darkness of a culture steepled in racism and oppression, to bestow the lessons of inspirations that sustained him, to focus energy and spirit toward healing action is a dear gift. This is an eloquent book about a great man's life and trials.

Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR

This inspirational memoir serves as a call to action from prison reform activist Yusef Salaam, of the Exonerated Five, that will inspire us all to turn our stories into tools for change in the pursuit of racial justice.

They didn't know who they had.

So begins Yusef Salaam telling his story. No one's life is the sum of the worst things that happened to them, and during Yusef Salaam's seven years of wrongful incarceration as one of the Central Park Five, he grew from child to man, and gained a spiritual perspective on life. Yusef learned that we're all "born on purpose, with a purpose." Despite having confronted the racist heart of America while being "run over by the spiked wheels of injustice," Yusef channeled his energy and pain into something positive, not just for himself but for other marginalized people and communities.

Better Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. Yusef writes his narrative: growing up Black in central Harlem in the '80s, being raised by a strong, fierce mother and grandmother, his years of incarceration, his reentry, and exoneration. Yusef connects these stories to lessons and principles he learned that gave him the power to survive through the worst of life's experiences. He inspires readers to accept their own path, to understand their own sense of purpose. With his intimate personal insights, Yusef unpacks the systems built and designed for profit and the oppression of Black and Brown people. He inspires readers to channel their fury into action, and through the spiritual, to turn that anger and trauma into a constructive force that lives alongside accountability and mobilizes change.

This memoir is an inspiring story that grew out of one of the gravest miscarriages of justice, one that not only speaks to a moment in time or the rage-filled present, but reflects a 400-year history of a nation's inability to be held accountable for its sins. Yusef Salaam's message is vital for our times, a motivating resource for enacting change. Better, Not Bitter has the power to soothe, inspire and transform. It is a galvanizing call to action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781549137655
Publisher:	Hachette Book Group
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Edition description:	Library Edition
Product dimensions:	0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Yusef Salaam is the inspirational speaker and prison abolitionist who, at age fifteen, was one of the five teenage boys wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison in the Central Park jogger case. In 1997, he left prison as an adult to a world he didn’t fully recognize or understand. In 2002, the sentences for the Central Park Five were overturned, and all five were exonerated for the crime they didn’t commit. Yusef now travels the world as an inspirational speaker, speaking about the effects of incarceration and the devastating impact of disenfranchisement. He is an advocate and educator on issues of mass incarceration, police brutality and misconduct, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in the criminal justice system, especially for men of color.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Born on Purpose, with a Purpose 1

1 The Escape 17

2 Master Yusef Salaam 39

3 Before 57

4 95A1113 75

5 Elevate and Decide in the Air 99

6 Love and War 125

7 Salaam Baloney! 147

8 The Safest Man You Could Ever Meet 169

9 The Expendability of a People 197

10 A Mother's Love 223

11 Ignorance as a Trillion-Dollar Industry 247

12 Becoming an Alchemist 265

Acknowledgments 283

Suggested Reading List 287

About the Author 289

Editorial Reviews

"Salaam's compelling memoir is one of astounding warmth…This book should be read by anyone who wants to hear the story of the Exonerated Five directly from one of its members.”—NPR

"An important memoir and call to action that sheds light on the personal injustices of mass incarceration."—Library Journal

“Warm, generous, and inspirational: a book for everyone.”

—Kirkus

“An uplifting and hopeful book.”

—Booklist

"Better Not Bitter is equal parts, a luminous journey of awakening, and an indictment of a system that swallows boys and girls whole, only to spit out their broken bones. It is an urgent and poetic treatise on the human spirit’s ability to make itself whole again over and over. I cried for the little boy who was imprisoned, and rejoiced for the man who emerged years later as a battle tested warrior for justice.”

—Shaka Senghor, New York Times bestselling author of Writing my Wrongs

"Punching the Air is the profound sound of humanity in verse... Utterly indispensable."—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author (Praise for Punching the Air)

"Zoboi and Salaam have created nothing short of a masterwork of humanity, with lyrical arms big enough to cradle the oppressed, and metaphoric teeth sharp enough to chomp on the bitter bones of racism. This is more than a story. This is a necessary exploration of anger, and a radical reflection of love, which ultimately makes for an honest depiction of what it means to be young and Black in America." —Jason Reynolds, NYT bestselling author of Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You: A Remix (Praise for Punching the Air)

From the Publisher

12/01/2021

In 1989, at age 14, Salaam was one of five teenage boys sentenced to prison for assaulting a Central Park jogger, serving out their sentences before another inmate confessed to the crime and they were exonerated. Here, he speaks of his upbringing, imprisonment, and exoneration in what became a case of national importance while highlighting his belief that we're all "born on purpose, with a purpose" and his work as a prison reform and racial justice activist.

Library Journal

★ 2021-03-09
One of the wrongly accused and imprisoned Central Park Five recounts his experiences with an unjust system of justice.

Salaam was just 15 when he “was run over by the spiked wheels of justice.” That collision came when he was accused, along with four other teenagers, of raping a young woman in New York’s Central Park and leaving her for dead. Tried as a juvenile, he was sent into adult custody at Rikers Island, “a notoriously violent prison from which many men never returned,” before being shifted in and out of other institutions. In 2002, following a jailhouse confession by the actual attacker, the convictions were overturned. Inside the system, taking a cue from Malcolm X, Salaam accepted the fact that “it’s often incumbent upon the person to educate him- or herself while inside.” He completed high school and earned an associate’s degree, building on his enrollment in the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art when he was only 12. “They have created cages in order to create animals so they’ll have an excuse to create more cages,” writes the author. “But we all have the power to blossom behind those bars.” Sadly, as he notes, whereas he had the support of a loving and attentive mother, many other imprisoned people have no social network. One of the Five, unable to find work and adjust to life outside, returned to prison. Punctuating his prose with memorable images (“Fear was playing Double Dutch with my mind”), Salaam denounces a system of injustice built on the backs of Black people, demonized as born criminals. Remarkably, though Donald Trump himself made his first foray into politics on the backs of the Five, the author mentions him by name just once in a book rich in self-knowledge and compassion. “As the alchemist of your life,” he writes, “you have control over the choices you make on this journey….But no matter what, you can be free.”

Warm, generous, and inspirational: a book for everyone.

Kirkus Reviews