Wow! A fantastic story of one man’s journey from incarceration and the life we get to explore of black men in the prison system. Thought provoking and harrowing.

What an amazing story. Beautiful message by a beautiful man.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance read.

Dr. Randall Horton blew my mind, he took me on a journey and I saw everything he was writing in Dead Weight. At times horrifying, at times painful, there was some humor and some lovely moments like those shared with his Mother. His words are poetry, his mentions of dead weight and how that wording can mean and exist in one's life is very clever. Dead Weight is Dr. Randall Horton's story, but it could be the story of many Black men who have been through the system. A lot of the judgment, the closed doors, and identity questions that come about after being released can be overwhelming for any person, especially when you are trying to do better and be better, it's like the world stops seeing you as a human and I think that is why the number of reoffending rates are high. Also, those last chapters and his visit to the Bahamas and that whole breakdown of who was involved, and why the drug epidemic existed, is what I hope many people still determined to gamble their life to the streets can hear from all the loudspeakers available.
Dead Weight takes you on a journey, his journey, of Dr. Horton through the penitentiary system and on to the other side, where he can honestly revisit those events, decisions, affiliations, everything he went through, and I hope with this book, Dr. Horton can stop carrying all of that dead weight, we see you!

This book was a great look at what makes us. This man had such a contrasting upbringing. He struggled. He turned his life again.

This is an interesting memoir, told in a series of short essays about the author's formative years when he was a drug runner, going back and forth from the Bahamas to the eastern US to bring in mostly cocaine during the 1980s. He comes close to being killed by other drug dealers, winds up in prison, and is now a college professor and writing various works, including poetry. His exploits are chronicled in this book are a fascinating look at his experience and the full width of society that he has dealt with during his life and his commentary on growing up in impoverished Black neighborhoods and the issues and lost opportunities.

The title refers to "how to kill the self for the sake of saelf-- a self lost." His constant codeswitching between his customers and his students, his suppliers and his employers is well worth reading.