Cw: child molestation, human right violation, incarceration, violence
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“Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us to places we need to go to understand why we must do better.” - Bryan Stevenson (author of Just Mercy) in the Foreword to this memoir
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Thank you @pantheonbooks for making this available to me 💕
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I TORE through this memoir - I was drawn in immediately bc I worked previously in a research group that conducted work in a federal correction institution, but I don’t think you need any type of background to appreciate the gravity of this memoir.
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The US is the only country where the prison-industrial complex is extended to children. Yep, children as young as 13 or 14 years old are tried as adults and given sentences as severe as Life without Parole. Ian Manuel was one of these children, sentenced after he non-fatally shot a woman in a botched robbery. Given that he was a child, he was placed in solitary confinement for decades (which is officially a human rights violation both by international standards and as a violation of Amendment 8), and fought for release from behind bars without adequate representation or support.
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If you are a fan of Assata Shakur’s autobiography, this is one for you. Manuel is a poet (in fact, this was lucrative in prison as he could be paid by other inmates who wanted poems to send home), and his memoir is sprinkled with powerful verses.
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Manuel was finally released with the help of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative - but in no way was he rescued. He is a survivor of lifelong abuse at the hands of family and the US government, and his talents in writing and resilience in the worst circumstances a human can face are why he is able to share his story with us. It’s a must read, though it was shocking and painful. We can’t look away from “the new Jim Crow” if we wish to abolish it.

Fans of Just Mercy and The Sun Does Shine will definitely want to read My Time Will Come. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring, and reading these books will enlighten you as to just how disturbing our criminal justice system is. This one is a bit different than the cases of Walter McMillian and Anthony Ray Hinton, as Manuel was guilty of the crime he committed. However, his punishment did not fit the crime, as giving up on a 13-year-old and sentencing him to life in prison, and making him stay in solitary confinement for almost 20 years, is extremely cruel.

"My Time Will Come" by Ian Manuel is the true story of the author's decades long struggle to secure freedom from a lifetime prison sentence for a crime he committed as a young teenager. Manuel details the vicious nature of America's system of mass incarceration and provides just one story of the many teenagers who are sentenced to a life behind bars for crimes they committed at a young age. Manuel spends decades, mostly in solitary confinement, searching for any avenue that will prove that the length of time for which he was sentenced never gives him the space to reestablish himself in society as a grown man who has learned from his actions. With the help of Bryan Stevenson and his team of lawyers at The Equal Justice Initiative, Manuel is released from prison. While his story is hopeful for Manuel himself, it barely shows promise for the people stuck behind bars without choice representation. "My Time Will Come" is interspersed with poems Manuel wrote during his time in prison and highlights that while each person is responsible for his or her own actions, the trauma experienced by people living in poverty often leads people, especially young people, to make decisions that are may not have been made under different circumstances. This book is really outstanding.