A review by cmcwhite_357
Bastards of the Reagan Era by Reginald Dwayne Betts

5.0

Betts has penned a personal and an at times pained volume that describes his experiences in America after the Reagan administration made policies that had a direct affect on his future. Years ago, Ronald Reagan proposed laws and congress responded with the legislation that has doomed a generation of men to a level of prison recidivism that haunts black men to this day. The over criminalization of simple crimes of drug possession have created a permanent underclass of people. A class system that is decidedly black and brown. By demonizing black men as unrepentant criminals who are leeches on society, he created a generation of boys who would have fathers, but not know them. Hence bastards. These boys would have fathers incarcerated and gone from their lives in some cases forever.

So the book takes me on a very deep look at the prison culture, the old and the young gone forever. "Old heads here say these chains and cells and walls, State numbers, years and years and years upon Years and years ain't nothing but Jim Crow..." Some poems speak of musical influences like Miles Davis and others describe horses and chariots and which his brother admires. Horse being the name of a drug and also the feeling that fills ones chest when exhilarated. Such powerful poems fills the book.

I hope one day to meet Reginald.