219: Plot Twist: From Solitary Confinement to NY Times Best Selling Author, Shaka Senghor’s Incredible Story of Redemption

It was a very chaotic environment. Every day it was super noisy. And you know, there was always the officers coming to extract people from their cells. And you know, they come as 10 officers fully adorned in what looks like hockey apparel. And they would come and extract people and take them to whether the suicide watch sale or other sales, which meant they spray pepper spray and that just goes through the whole unit. So there was days where you would just, you know, I'd be sitting on my bunk and all of a sudden I'm coughing and whatever because they're sparing pepper spray without consideration for everybody else around them. And it was chaos. And at one point I started to question whether I was actually losing it because I wasn't reactive to so many of the things that other people were as reactive to. And I was like, well, maybe I'm the one who's losing it. And they've got it all together. And that's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic and nothing is normal and there's no idea when you're going to get out. And so for me, writing in that environment required a lot of ingenuity.

Hey, friend. Welcome back to the Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. Today I have a bite sized plot twist episode, which is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of a pivotal moment in their life trajectory. And the idea behind sharing these plot twists is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists when they happen in your life. Because usually when you get turned around from what you thought was your path, what's actually happening is you're being detoured towards your actual path. And sometimes that looks like getting fired, or it could look like being betrayed. Or in the case of this week's guest author, Shaka Sengur, it's being locked up in solitary confinement for nearly five straight years and using this time as an opportunity to create, to write his first book and to dream about having his book being read by Oprah Winfrey. Well, after several plot twists, turns out Shaka's dream wasn't so implausible after all because he went on to become a New York Times best selling author and he now travels the world giving talks and creating content that draws upon his unique past. And he uses his story of redemption to encourage us to break free from thinking that is potentially holding Us back. And at the beginning of this plot twist, Shaka has been locked up in solitary confinement. And he is first starting to get the idea to write a book within 30 days. He has no formal writing training, and while it's hard enough to write a book in regular life, he found the inspiration to see it through to the end, which becomes a theme of his life story. From that point, his big dream is to get his book in Oprah Winfrey's hands, which is the furthest thing away from where he currently is when he has that dream. And let's see how his dream plays out.

When I think about where I was at the time that I was writing, there's a few things that comes up. You know, there's obviously the pain of the experience. And solitary confinement is something that I will forever advocate to have ended. I think it's the most barbaric and inhumane treatment that we can inflict on people consciously and with our tax dollars. And, you know, I think to lock a person in a cell or a cage for years at a time is cruel and unusual punishment. And the environment that I was in, the thing that struck me the most about it was the high level of mental health challenges that the men around me were faced with and the way that showed up. Whether it was men who were cutting themselves so that they can get taken to a hospital and receive some type of care and comfort for somebody who treated them with humanity, or whether it was just the personal attacks on each other from, you know, slinging feces on each other to sleep deprivation by banging on the toilets and their cells. It was a very chaotic environment. Every day it was super noisy. And there was always the officers coming to extract people from their cells. And they come as 10 officers fully adorned in what looks like hockey apparel. And they would come and extract people and take them to whether the suicide watch sale or other cells, which means they spray pepper spray. And that just goes through the whole unit. So there was days where you would just. I'll be sitting on my bunk, and all of a sudden I'm coughing and whatever. Cause they're spraying pepper spray without consideration for everybody else around them. And it was chaos. And at one point, I started to question whether I was actually losing it because I wasn't reactive to so many of the things that other people were as reactive to. And I was like, maybe I'm the one who's losing it. And they're. And they've got it all together. And that's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic and nothing is normal and there's no idea when you're going to get out. And for me, writing in that environment required a lot of ingenuity. You know, I had to rate, so what's the optimum time? And typically it was once the lights were out, you know, in the cell block, then things would quiet down. And so I would stand by the window, it's a little small window at the back of my cell, and a little bit of light that filtered in, I would write from that, you know, and then sometimes I would lay on the floor and write from the little bit of light that leaked up under the cell door. So I was always just finding different ways to do it. And then I created just a consistent cadence of what I want my experience to be like. This is once I started realizing that we may not be able to control our circumstances, but I believe we can always control our reaction to them. And so I began to set myself up as if I was at university. I would study, you know, philosophy. In the morning I would go from philosophy to world history, from world history to African history, from African history to Eastern philosophy. And then I would get into literature, and then I would make time to just read. And then after I got done with that, then that's when I would write. So I just made sure that I consistently kept my mind moving forward. You know, I think people lose hope when they can't take that next step in their mind. And so those things allow me to just every day to add some type of value to my life and to my experience and really just to keep me moving forward.

What about more practical considerations such as exercise, food, water? Was that adequate when you were in there?

The exercise part, that's up to you. And so I definitely exercise every day. I would take my mattress and roll it up and then I would tie a sheet around the mattress, and then I would loop another seat through the mattress and then I would curl the mattress. And so that's how I would do my curls. I would do like shoulder presses and then I would just do push ups and other calisthenics. And so that was part of that baked in routine just to keep my body moving forward. Meditation that was so important to me is like the ability to process my mind in a way that emptied out all those negative, self defeating thoughts. Journaling, that was very practical. You know, practice for me is to really get things out of my mind. In regards to food, we were solely reliant on whatever they were serving. So that was oftentimes not the best. The portions are very skimpy. You can't buy a commissary out of the store when you're in solitary. And so the only edible things you can buy are cough drops. So cough drops became like candy as well as currency. But that was it, you know, and you can't save. You can't hoard food, because if they catch you with any food that you saved, basically, they will put you on food restriction. And then you would get a big lump of what's called food loaf, which is all the food mashed up and baked into this brick. And so, you know, to avoid that, you have to eat whatever you can before you turn your tray in.

All right, so under all those conditions, you wrote your first book within 30 days. Did you know it was good? Or how did you get any validation? You pass it around, let the other guys read it.

How does it work?

Yeah. So, you know, I remember setting very intentional parameters for finishing the book, because when I was journaling, I realized that I had never completed anything I had. Only thing I had completed was a GED and so I was like, you know, I want to challenge myself. And so I challenge myself to write this book in 30 days. And I got it done. And I remember thinking to myself, a book isn't a book until somebody reads it. And so I asked the guys on the sale block, I'm like, yo, anybody want to read this book? And a few guys was like, no, we don't read that. Blah, blah. You ain't, you know, the same Oprah's book.

Most of these guys can't even really read. They're operating on the third grade reading level, right?

Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a third grade reading level. But they're surprising. You know, some guys who figure out how to get through books that resonate with them. That's why I think Donald Gornes was so important in iceberg slim. I think you put more effort into something when you can see yourself in it. And one guy, he was like, yeah, send it over to me. And I remember I had to send it over on a fish last. We would make these lines that we would attach stuff and slide it up under the door so that the other person could pull it in. I remember sending it under the door and thinking to myself, this is my only copy, as the last part of it slid on the door, and if you don't give me back, there's nothing I could do because we're in solitary. But I remember him getting it, and. And I Didn't hear from him from.

A couple of hours.

So I started getting really nervous. I'm like, oh, man, you gonna keep the book? Then that's gonna turn into a whole conflict when we get back to the yard.

You gotta turn back into the old shaka.

Gotta go back to the. You know, and, you know, trying to avoid that at all costs. But I remember him coming back to the cell door. He was like, yo, man, this is one of the best books I ever read.

Wow.

And I did a little dance, like, in my cell. I was like, yo, I did it, blah, blah. And then I had this moment of clarity. I was like, he's in solitary confinement, so probably super boring.

His judgment is a little bit skewed.

I'm like, I could have sent him a recipe over there. And so, you know, I was like, you know, I got to get my workout. And I eventually started sending work out to one of my brothers. He's my stepbrother, but we don't identify the step. He's just my older brother. His name is. We call him Kid, but his name is Will Red. And I remember sending my. My older brother the book out, and. Well, initially, I sent him some short stories first. And I remember him writing me, and he had wrote me much in prison. You know, my. My older brother, he was like the one brother who had never had a brush with the system, never got caught up in the streets. He played ball for high school, he went to college. You know, he was doing all the right things. And to this day, he's just an incredible example for me as a father, as a husband, and all the things that he does really inspires me. But I remember getting a letter from him, and he was like, man, you know, he's like, I read all this stuff when I was in college, and I read all these different things people wrote, and he was like, you write better than most people I went to school with. And I was like, wow. You know, like, that validation meant something. It was like, this is something I could take serious. And so I continued writing. And then I started. Once I got out of solitaire, I started sharing the books in the cell block. And just that grapevine of, like, guys coming like, yo, man, when can I get the book next? I heard so much about it. When guys started to talk about it that you have no connection to. They don't know nothing about you. That's when I was like, okay, I'm on to something.

Okay, so as you're writing, were you recognizing any patterns?

If I tell more stories, If I'm.

Like completely raw and honest, that's the stuff that connects with people the most. Or were you just like just stream of consciousness and just writing whatever was coming to you?

I think a lot of it was as I talked about early being really influenced by hip hop. And I think about some of the artists that I've grown up loving. And the ones that always resonated with me was people who rap very cinematically, the great storytellers, you know, the cool G rap, you know, you know, the Nas's. And people who are very. Can bring you into their world. And that really from a storytelling structure, the way that I've approached it is that I want people to feel like they're part of this world, that they're having the experience of the characters, that they can smell the environment, they can taste the environment, they can be grossed out, they can fall in love, they can be angry, they can be, they can laugh, all the things. So I think that instinct really came from reading a lot and listening to a lot of hip hop. And what I started finding consistently in the reactions to my work is people would say, I felt like I was there, I felt like I was part of the experience. And so that became a thing where I was very intentional about setting the scene and really setting up those connecting points and the metaphors and the similes that really align with that more cinematic storytelling.

At what point were you aware that you were going to get out? And when you found out and now you're writing these books and you're getting this response, what was your plan in your head right before you actually walked out of those gates? What were you thinking was going to happen with all of this?

I was excited when I wrote the first couple of books, and for years they were just like tight, you know, in folders. I would carry them from safeguarding with, you know, with my everything. And during this time there was this uptick in like literature that was coming from communities like real communities, like, you know, Terry Woods, True to the Game, Sister Soldier, the Coldest winner Ever, Quan Animal. Like all these great literary, like, to me, they're literary giants, right? They may not rise to what people typically frame as literary, but I think if you can communicate a reality from an environment that makes people feel something, that makes people feel connected, that. That makes people feel like they can see themselves in those stories, that's greatness to me. And that's what they embody. And so I saw the way that they were hustling. They were hustling books and also Come from that era where DJs would hustle the tapes in the neighborhood. I used to DJ and we had sell a mixtape for $2, you know, too short hustling. You know, his album out of the Trunk and Masterpiece. So I knew those stories because I was reading V magazine and Source and keeping my ear to the street. So I knew that I can get out and sell books. I just had to get out. That was a big part of it, was getting out. And that was something I didn't know. I didn't know if I was ever getting out of prison, because that's what they told me. Like, you would die in here. The first step was getting myself out of solitary and then getting to.

You did that with a freaking letter?

Yeah, yeah, I wrote a letter to the warden. It was a mixture of writing a letter and reading all these philosophical books on a philosophical idea of what the truth is. And basically what I did is I wrote the war in the letter. And I said, and I prefaced it with, what you're going to read is my truth. And if you follow the pattern of what my experience is, they line up with exactly what I said when I came to prison. And I said I wasn't following the rules. And I've been pretty consistent with that. Which means that you can agree or disagree with me not following the rules, but what you have to agree with is that I told the truth. And if you believe that the truth is the most important thing, then everything that I'm about to tell you in this letter, moving forward, I would hope that you acknowledge that as truth as well. And that's when I told him, if you give me an opportunity to get out, I'm going to pursue this writing thing. I'm going to take it serious. I'm going to stop doing the things I was doing on the yard to get in trouble. And I'm going to focus on becoming the best writer that I can be. And it was the first and only time that a Warren has ever directly wrote me back. And he said he was so moved by the letter and he believed my truth, that he's going to advocate for me to get released from solitary. And he ended up doing that. And so it still took about two years because he had to go to his higher ups. But once I got out, you know, I started typing those books up. I had a little word. A brother's word processing was a brother ML500. I had that little word process. You can only see, like, half of a sentence on that little screen. And I would just type, type non stop for days on end, transferring those books to type manuscripts. And so I did that, but that's what I shared in the cell blocks, those type manuscripts. And meanwhile, I started putting the business plan together. I started walking through what I wanted to happen with my writing. You know, I was very intentional about where I wanted to land at and what I wanted it to become. When I got out, I wrote in every genre you can think of. I started with fiction. At one point, I wrote some erotica, which turned into a whole different things because, you know, it was a mixture of me coming from being a hustler to evolving into a real writer. And so it was like, okay, I can write and I know I can move products, so I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna hustle these books. And so, you know, I ended up meeting Sekou's mom. Sekou is my youngest son, who I write about in the book, But I met his mom while I was incarcerated, you know, and we started exchanging correspondence. And she was like, what is your plan for life? And I was like, I'm happy you asked. Here's what I want to do. And I sent her a whole business plan, a whole breakdown of how I was going to diss the literary scene, how I was going to approach it, the places I was going to go. My goal was to get out, get a job, save that money, buy some books, take those books, hustle them everywhere I could. Buy more books, hustle and rinse and repeat. And she was like, wow. Like, she's like, I'm with it. Like, let me help you, you know? And so we ended up joining forces, and I actually published my first book from prison in 2008, crack volume one. And as soon as I published the book, I got sued by the Department of Corrections for the cost of my incarceration. But I didn't let that deter me, you know? And, you know, I went up for parole that same year, got denied, went back up the following year, got denied. And I decided I wasn't going back to the parole board at that point, and I was just going to do the time. And the reason I had thought about that was it was hard watching my dad and at the time, who was my girlfriend, it was hard watching them suffer. And I wanted to relieve them of getting their hopes up high, only to have them dashed by my denial of a prison parole release. And fortunately, Sekou's mom came to visit me the same day, and I sat in that visiting room, and I was in tears, you know, it was heartbreaking watching her come through security and get patted down and have to take her shoes off and have to open her mouth and have to be touched and all the things. And I was like, I didn't want her to suffer through that anymore. And so when she walked in, I was like, I gotta break up with this woman, you know? And so, you know, as soon as she sat down, you know, I go into this whole spiel about we have to break up, and, you know, I broke down in tears and, you know, just let me cry and get it out. And then she was like, you're absolutely going to your next parole board here. You can get it together and get back up in there. But we didn't come this far to give up. I ended up going back and I got paroled on that third try, you know, and as they said, the third time was the charm. And so the first thing I did when I got out of prison, I went from. They took me from the prison to the parole office. I had to check in with my parole office. And Ebony, who was Sekou's mom, she pulls up her and my oldest son, Jay. And there was a brother who was getting out. His name is Prince Montgomery. He was getting out the same day we had met on the last 60 days of my sentence. And he was like, man, I'm about one of your books when I get out. And I thought he was talking about once he got home and got himself together, but, you know, he had money in his account and they gave him that. And he was like, yo, did you. Did your girl bring them books? And she was like, yeah, I got him in the trunk. I'm like, yo, pop that trunk. And I remember him giving me the books were only 15. He gave me $20. I didn't have no change. I didn't have no money on me. And he was like, man, keep that extra five, man. I'm happy to support you, you know? So we celebrate our freedom anniversary, but we also celebrate the moment of my first actual hand to hand book sale. And I've been selling books ever since.

I had family members in prison. When you get out of prison, it's hard to get an apartment, it's hard to get a car, it's hard to get a job, it's hard to get a bank account, right, because you have to report that you're a felon in each of those cases. And so one of the biggest priorities is rebuilding and getting back on your feet financially, etc. Especially as a man. And especially as a man in his 40s, no one's feeling sorry for you if you can't pay your bills. So a lot of your family, a lot of your friends are telling you, hey, Shaka, don't tell anybody you've been. Just keep your head down. Go get you a decent job. And you defied all of that because you believed in yourself so much. So I just wanted to make a note of that because I think it adds context to the courage you had to have to really lean into your story and to use that.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I. I tell all my mentees that what you believe about yourself is more important than what anybody else believes about you. And when I came home, I know my family had the best of intentions. They really wanted me to just find a job and live the rest of my life. I come from a working class community, people who work for the factories and work in social work and things of that nature. So they just, if you can get a job, you'll be fine. And I put in for jobs. It wasn't like I didn't come out like I could just pull magic out of the air in some random way. I knew I had to have a game plan, you know, but it was hard to get hired, you know, And I ended up. I would get these little random jobs, you know. My first job actually was writing for a local newspaper. Every job that I've had since I've been out of prison have come through these very unconventional ways. I ended up posting, like, I opened up a Facebook page because I knew the marketing side. I'm like, I got to get to reach the people, right? I don't know nothing about this social media. I just know it's people on there and they need to be buying my book. And I remember making a post and just saying, if there's any local artists, send me your music so I can write a music review. And I had two missions in mind. One was to get access to free music, and the other one was just to keep my writing skills sharp. And there was a woman following me at the time who was the managing editor at a local newspaper called the Michigan Citizen. And her name was Zenobia. Zenobia was like, hey, can you do reviews for us? And I was like, sure. So I write these two reviews, and then she called me, was like, hey, come pick up your check. And I was like, what check? What are you talking about? And she's like, oh, we're paying you for those reviews. It was like $25 or something. But I was like, wow, I made some money writing these reviews and so I just started writing. It was like a couple extra dollars coming in, you know, $50 extra a week. I wasn't making a ton of money, I didn't have a job. And so every penny counted. And then one day she hits me up and she was like, one of our staff writers isn't available. Can you cover this story? I went and wrote this story. It was about this man, his name is Warren Harper, Detroit based theater actor. And he had his movie coming out about, you know, it's about this church, et cetera. And I remember going to interview him and started the movie that was coming out. It was fine, it was cool. But his story was fascinating. You know, he had been addicted to crack cocaine for long time in his life and he found theater therapeutic. And it found that art form as a means to help with his healing. And he was also running a drug rehab program and using art to help people find their way. And so I ended up writing his story. Weeks later, after the paper comes out, the magazine editor, she calls me in and she gives me this stack of mail and she's, we've never got this much mail for an article in this newspaper. And so they just started offering me the opportunities to cover different stories and then they allowed me to go out and find stories. So a lot of my friends to this day, I found them through writing their stories because they were small business owners. Actually, one of my best friends, name is fame Premier Brown Jr. He's a fashion designer, owns a store called 313. I write about him in the book I met him covering writing about his business at the time. And now we've been friends for 11 years. So that's the kind of the pathway forward. Then a mentoring program. I ended up winning that award. It came with a $25,000 stipend. I was able to pay myself for the month, get some supplies, do the programs. And then that following year, that organization hired me as a consultant. And so it was like all these little consulting one offs, just enough to pay the bills, just enough to get from point A to point B while I continue writing. But it was during that time as I was doing all these things, when people would, they were reading, hearing about Crack Volume one. But they would always say to me, you don't sound like someone who's been in prison. And they meant it as a compliment, but it always dressed up something really hurtful to me because when I was in prison, I met some of the most brilliant men in my life. And that still holds true today. And I know some incredible people. My network is full of some of the most brilliant scientists and venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and actors and writers. I met some of the most brilliant men in prison. These men are my mentors. They are the men who guided me to books. They are the men that saw something in me before I saw anything in myself. And so that bothered me, you know? And I was like, you know, I need to tell people about how I went to prison, because my story isn't unique. Inside our prisons in America, there is a wealth of talent, a wealth of genius. There's a wealth of creativity, entrepreneurship, and good people who unfortunately, have either made decisions that landed them there because a series of things that happened in their life, or people who were falsely accused. And so that's what inspired me to right my wrongs. And I wrote that book, self published that originally in 2013, and hustled it like I hustled the rest of the books. But there was something different happening with the response to that book. I started to see this uptick in this groundswell of people, like, this is an important book, and this book needs to be out in the world. And we hustled the book. I remember sending one person who supported me. They bought books for every prison in America. They were so moved by the book. They was like, if you put together a list of all the prisons in America, I'll write you a check to send books to them. And I remember putting together a little crew of my friends and my brother, and we sat in my garage and we packed over a thousand books and sent them to prisons in Sekou's mom. We sent them to prisons, living all over America. And eventually I was doing the talk. And after I did the talk, there was a woman there, and this woman, her husband came up to me later on, like, after the talk. Sure, you've done these talks where they have the kind of happy hour room, and everybody's chilling after work. And I'm sitting there, and his brother comes up to me. Super clean cut brother, you know, very polished. And he's like, I'm really upset with you. And I'm like, oh, man, what did I say in my talk that offended him? I'm thinking he's about to be like, chatter here in these come from the hood stories. You know, I think he's about to land to me, you know, And I'm, you know, I'm like, what's. What's going on? You know, how did I, you know, how did I offend you? He's like, you know, my wife is in the room reading your book. We supposed to be out here having fun, getting time away from the kids, and she don't want to leave the room. And so we had a laugh and finished the night with drinks and all that. It turns out that his wife, who's now a dear friend of mine named Andrea, she used to work for Oprah. And so she took the book to Oprah.

The self published book.

She took it to Oprah. The self published book? Yeah, the self published one. Oprah gets the book. And she's like, why would I read this book? This guy's on the COVID with tattoos and barbed wire fences and he's been in prison for murder. Like, why would I read this book? And what Oprah said is that she took that book and kept moving it around her house because she doesn't throw books away. When she was moving her operation to la, she said she was like, let me just take this book. So she took the book with us. She's on her plane, says she got 50 pages in and was like, I gotta interview this guy. And Oprah has gone on to say that our interview is one of the best in her, not just in her career, but in her life. And that Right My Wrongs is one of her favorite books of all time, one of her favorite memoirs. She said it was her favorite memoir until Will Smith dropped his memoir. So I might have got bumped down. I don't know yet.

What was that day like when you got that call? Was it Andrea that called you or owner Oprah's other people that called you?

So Andrea called me first and was like, oprah wants to interview you. She wants you to come out to Hawaii. And I was just like, well, what actually happened was. So Andrea calls me, she comes to an unknown number at the time. I answer it, because I answer all unknown numbers at the time. I'm like, I could. Might be some business, it might be some bills, I don't know which one. But let me gamble, answer the call. She said, hey, Shaka, you know, I want to talk to you, blah, blah. And then the phone disconnects and she calls me the next day. I'm so sorry, something was going on with the kids, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, but I was calling you because Oprah wants to interview you and I'm going to connect you to her producer. And I was like, wow, she wants you to come to Hawaii. So she connects me to the producer. Producer is yes, she wants you to come this, that and other. So I set it up. So I'm hyped. I'm like, yo, I'm going to Hawaii. I ain't never been. Only thing I've ever seen is like Hawaii 5o when I was a kid. So I'm hyped up. I got this idea of how I'm gonna be greeted getting off the plane and the producer calls back and Oprah doesn't want you to come to Hawaii. So my heart literally just sank.

That was Shaka Senghor, author of Righting My Wrongs and most recently Letters to the Sons of Society. And to see why Oprah declined the interview and how the whole story unfolds from there, you want to check out our original episode, which is episode number 87. You can find that in the podcast archive if you go to lightwatkins.com podcast and I recommend following Shaka on the socials at Shaka Sengor, which is S H A K A S E N G H O R and if you know anyone who's making the world a better place and they have incredible plot twists in their life, email me your guest suggestions@lightwatkins.com My other ask is that you take a few seconds to rate and review the show. You hear podcast hosts like me ask listeners like you all the time for ratings because that's how a lot of my future guests are going to determine whether or not they are going to come onto my podcast. So it does make a huge difference and it's completely free and only takes 10 seconds. All you do is look at your device, you click on the name of this show and you scroll down past those first five episodes and you'll see a space with five blank stars. Just tap the star on the right and you've left a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous and you want to leave a review, just one line what you like about this podcast and it will go a very long way. And also, don't forget, you can watch these plot twist episodes on my YouTube channel if you prefer to see what Shaka looks like as he's sharing his plot twist. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well. All right, I'll see you on Wednesday with the next long form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place. And until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart, keep leaning into those plot twists in your life. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic weekend.