My Journey to Freedom, Forgiveness, and Healing
“No matter what I do, the label rapist follows me everywhere,” Ammi writes in the third entry in his Live or Die Tryin’ series, which chronicles his life after serving ten years of the 16-year prison sentence he received for attempted murder just after turning 15.
Ammi describes that as “a wrongful conviction,” the work of the “school-to-prison pipeline” that has led to the incarceration of so many Black men. He likewise maintains his innocence in the rape accusation that resulted in an $8.2 million civil judgment that “went viral and destroyed my reputation.” Ammi, an activist, frames the accusation—which did not result in criminal charges—as another in “a series of battles against a system designed to oppress, marginalize, and silence voices like mine.”
Ammi is persuasive when diagnosing and denouncing systemic injustice, and he often writes with power. Of his broken marriage, Ammi writes “anger, hurt, and a burning desire for revenge surged within me,” emotions that grew in strength when he faced separation from his children, homelessness, and being labeled “radical” and “anti-police.” Ammi includes open letters to his children and exes, plus poetry exploring outrage, grief, forgiveness, and the “cycle of systemic violence” that drives life both inside and outside of prison—in “a society where your skin color can dictate whether you live or die.”
Ammi notes that “in our society, to destroy a Melanated or so-called Black man’s reputation is to destroy his very essence.” His efforts here to repair his own reputation are bolstered by accounts of his activism, his dedication to fatherhood, and his hard work, after prison, not just to provide for his family but, through efforts like his Stop the Violence initiative, to “fight for a world where my children can live without fear.” Undercutting those efforts, though, are Ammi’s reports of other accusations of abuse from women. In some cases, his counter-accusations are as impossible to prove or disprove as those Ammi himself has faced.
Emotional account of an activist’s journey after accusations and incarceration.
Comparable Titles: Ronald Olivier’s 27 Summers, Courtney B. Vance and Robin L. Smith’s The Invisible Ache.
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