Bastards of the Reagan Era

Bastards of the Reagan Era is a challenge, confronting realities that frame an America often made invisible. Within these poems, we see the city as distant lover, we hear "the sound that comes from all / the hurt & want that leads a man to turn his back to the world." We see that and we see each reason why we return to what pains us.

About the Author :
REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS'S Shahid Reads His Own Palm won the Beatrice Hawley Award. His memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, received the 2010 NAACP Image Award for nonfiction. He is a Yale Law student.

Review :
"Dwayne Betts describes my field, criminal law, as 'the business of human tragedy.' He's right. In Bastards of the Reagan Era, Betts does a remarkable job of describing the precise shape of that tragedy. It comes at the right moment, too, as many Americans are straining to see something beyond 'guilty' and 'prisoner' when they look at criminal law. Betts is a great poet, and a witness to truths that have for too long been shrouded in media fables and easy politics."--Mark Osler "New York Times" "Patriarchal sentiment is not the reason Reginald Betts begins Bastards of the Reagan Era with a heart-wrenching praise song to his sons, Miles and Micah. He is celebrating the singular occasion of their continued breath. In this bitter, unflinching and triumphant work, Betts mercilessly probes the soul of the soulless machine charged with the disappearing and dismantling of black men's lives. This crisp assemblage of perseverance and loss relentlessly pummels the status quo, poems building each upon the other until the desolate inevitability of the narrative both enervates and empowers the reader. The poet himself warns, 'when I sing this awful tale, there is more than a dead black man in the center.'"--Patricia Smith "New York Times" "The redemption [Betts] has found in wrestling, fearlessly, with the destructive decisions . . . of his generation's trials is mesmerizing and beautiful in the language and rhythms of his pen."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University "New York Times" Fierce, lyrical and unsparing, the poems in Bastards of the Reagan Era is a haunting and harrowing book that addresses, through the power of poetry, the trials of coming of age during an era in which unarmed black men and boys are dying at the hands of police officers, and millions are incarcerated by a justice system that turns people into statistics and warps their lives and hopes.--Michiko Kakutani "New York Times" Dwayne Betts describes my field, criminal law, as 'the business of human tragedy.' He's right. In Bastards of the Reagan Era, Betts does a remarkable job of describing the precise shape of that tragedy. It comes at the right moment, too, as many Americans are straining to see something beyond 'guilty' and 'prisoner' when they look at criminal law. Betts is a great poet, and a witness to truths that have for too long been shrouded in media fables and easy politics. Mark Osler" Patriarchal sentiment is not the reason Reginald Betts begins Bastards of the Reagan Era with a heart-wrenching praise song to his sons, Miles and Micah. He is celebrating the singular occasion of their continued breath. In this bitter, unflinching and triumphant work, Betts mercilessly probes the soul of the soulless machine charged with the disappearing and dismantling of black men's lives. This crisp assemblage of perseverance and loss relentlessly pummels the status quo, poems building each upon the other until the desolate inevitability of the narrative both enervates and empowers the reader. The poet himself warns, 'when I sing this awful tale, there is more than a dead black man in the center.' Patricia Smith" The redemption [Betts] has found in wrestling, fearlessly, with the destructive decisions . . . of his generation s trials is mesmerizing and beautiful in the language and rhythms of his pen. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University" New York Times" "Reginald Dwayne Betts paid a heavy price for the wisdom coursing through his fierce, unstoppable book of poems, Bastards of the Reagan Era. The redemption he has found in wrestling, fearlessly, with the destructive decisions--and decade--of his generation's trials is mesmerizing and beautiful in the language and rhythms of his pen. Betts's journey back--from prison all the way to Yale Law School--is as inspiring as it is rare, and should give us pause in condemning any man to social death. From rebirth comes justice--and power."--Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University "Fierce, lyrical and unsparing, the poems in Bastards of the Reagan Era is a haunting and harrowing book that addresses, through the power of poetry, the trials of coming of age during an era in which unarmed black men and boys are dying at the hands of police officers, and millions are incarcerated by a justice system that turns people into statistics and warps their lives and hopes."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times