Sharper Than the Sword:
Powerful Words from People Behind Bars
Welcome to Sharper Than the Sword: Powerful Words from People Behind Bars, a new humanization campaign. No matter the system’s violence and oppression, our words are sharper and mightier.
Here you can read the uncensored, sincere thoughts from impressive artists and thinkers around Virginia. They range from evocative poetry to justice reform calls to action to educational theorizing. Oh, yeah, they all also come from the minds and hearts of people whose lives have been shaped by Virginia’s (in)justice system.
Click on any of The Humanization Project’s featured contributors to experience their voices. You will be impressed!
Many of the profound writers featured in this project will be jointly highlighted as part of ACLU of Virginia’s current Look Again: Stories of Second Chances project. There (and here) you can learn more about their personal journeys and experiences. Here we also offer an extensive selection of their own thought-provoking writings.
Mark Baker
Hello, everyone. My name is Mark Baker, and I was recently released from a Virginia correctional facility after serving just under two decades. I can’t really tell you about exactly who I am, as I am a glorious new work in progress. I would, however, love to share with you a bit about what I experienced during my incarceration and my journey back into society. Learn more about how finding myself and making true friends brought me a sense of community that got me through and inspired me to build for others. Even tragedy and trauma can bring opportunity.
Harry Traynham, aka "Justice"
Harry Antwan Traynham, also known as Justice, was sentenced to 64 years in Virginia Department of Corrections at 19 years old. As a result of this life-changing circumstance, he became a student of the Nation of Gods & Earths, embracing their principles that “Knowledge of Self is the Greatest Education” and that “Education is the Necessary Means.” He dedicated himself to education, being educated, educating others, and advocating for freedom, justice, and equality. As a result, he believes that his redemption lies in being proactive and being a positive and uplifting factor in his community and in society.
In his efforts to be that positive factor in his community, he has founded Positive Offenders Implementing New Thinking (P.O.I.N.T.), a peer group that is tasked with being educational, political, and socially active within the prison community. Applying this ideology, he is the co-creator and -facilitator of two ongoing educational programs for people behind bars, “The 12 Jewels of Noble Character Program”: (developed by P.O.I.N.T.) and “Man’s Search For Meaning,” centered around Viktor Frankl’s
book of that same title. He also co-facilitates the Victim Impact and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People programs. He is also a certified Dialogue Skills Practitioner, baker, and practicing essayist who hopes to publish his collection.
Alfonso Skyles, aka "Quillz"
I have come to a place in my life where I find great joy in being of service to those things that matter. Throughout this journey of mine, pain and hardships have been accompanied by loss and grief. There have been many tear-soaked pillowcases and sore shoulders from accepting burdens that were not my own. It was in my earlier years of prison that I found so many older mentors who would show me the same. And it was at that place and time that I began to write.
I’m often questioned about the moniker “Quillz.” To be honest, my deep respect and love for my craft and the art of writing wasn’t the only reason why I chose such a name. For me, as much as it is a tool of creative expression, it is also a powerful weapon to bring about and generate change…inwardly and outwardly.
Aubrey Mike Berryman, aka "Bear"
If New Mexico is the “The Land of Enchantment,” then Albuquerque is its quirky collective. Born there, those that know me often say I got a double ration of said peculiarity. Whatever the dose being dished, I feel it is of paramount importance to bring something strange and magical to every forefront. That is to say, ever do I offer the nebulous and ethereal things that link us as people. The latchkey kid’s laughter. A grandfather’s proud sigh. Or maybe the feeling of an invisible knife hanging over one’s neck, eternally glancing about for its inevitable fall, yet always waiting.
Carrying many a stone’s weight in regret and prison’s plodding timepiece with which to measure it, I often swim in the river of reflection. Without connection, without purpose, without words on which to float, I’d drown beneath the heaviness of it all. Threads of thought, these tales I offer are about many things but always about what binds us. What we do, what we survive, and who we are afterwards, on our own and together, is what I so often write about…and why.