Were you surprised to discover this dynamic?ĭonaldson: I was amazed when I first got up there. TCR: The book is also about the community of Elmira, aka “Zebratown,” where poor black men from New York City find kinship with poor white women from upstate. people have challenges, as we all do, and I think this book points out some of those challenges. Kevin is not the ideal ex-inmate who is ready to go and can make all the adjustments easily. I hope that people who are in charge of re-entry programs or educational programs for inmates will read the book, and learn something about this. The economic and other collateral punishments are exactly similar. Kevin is a unique individual, but he's also representative in some ways. TCR: Do you think that Kevin's obstacles are common among men, specifically men of color, after being released from prison?ĭonaldson: That's one of the reasons why I wrote the book. The book, the celebrity it has afforded him so far and may afford him in the future, is what he's looking forward to and if that doesn't happen, I don't know what's going to happen.
He asked, do you think the existence of this book will make it harder for Kevin to change into a person that could accept the everyday life of an average man rather than the star he had been used to in the streets and prison? Kevin didn't answer the question, but it is an interesting question: whether Kevin, in the long run, can accept the life of just a husband and a father, an every-day Joe. Kevin came to visit one my classes recently and one of my students asked a wonderful question. Not where you show up and behave fatherly on occasion, but you do it every day all day. In Brooklyn, and in prison, his reputation as a fighter made him a celebrity, but in Elmira he had responsibilities. Kevin had to – still has to – come to terms with who he is. But his internal issues made it hard, too. He couldn't even get a job at the Kennedy Valve factory upstate that the New York Times had written about as being the third circle of hell, where people died regularly. Externally, he was unable to get certain kinds of jobs because of his conviction.
What were his biggest obstacles?ĭonaldson: Kevin had internal and external obstacles. TCR: After seven years in prison, Kevin is determined to stay out, but it's not easy. So what would it be like to one of these swaggering street thugs to reinvent himself in small-town America? He wanted to change not only his lifestyle, but where he lived. The other thing was his determination to reinvent himself. They talk like them they walk like them they dress like them. These thugs have almost become like the American cowboy. Kevin is the person they're rapping about, one of these zero-tolerance, violence-first people. Kevin's profile is also one that is romanticized greatly in our culture through gangsta rap. Kevin was one of them, and you very rarely get a chance to look inside the head and see the motivations and the actual feelings of a guy like this. Greg Donaldson: I spent a lot of time in really rough neighborhoods for my book about (the) Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn (ED NOTE: The Ville: Cops and Kids in Urban America) In that book, I chronicled the lives of people who lived there and always hovering in the background were these alpha males, these tough guys, who often live in an illegal manner, and they affect everybody in the community. What was it about him and his story that made you say yes? The Crime Report: Kevin had to track you down and convince you to write about him. The result was one of this year's most unusual books: Zebratown: The True Story of a Black Ex-Con and a White Single Mother in Small-Town America.ĭonaldson spoke recently with The Crime Report's Julia Dahl about his relationship with the ex-inmate, Kevin Davis, and about Davis' troubled efforts to build a “normal life” for himself after prison in the industrial city of Elmira, NY. The prisoner had read a book Donaldson published in 1993 which chronicled the lives of young African-American toughs like himself (and featured his picture on the cover), and wondered whether the professor would like to tell his story. Ten years ago, a prisoner finishing a seven-year term in a northern New York State prison sent an e-mail to John Jay College professor (and former New York investigative journalist) Greg Donaldson.