Join award-winning journalists Sylvia A. Harvey and Akiba Solomon for an important discussion on the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families—as it relates to Harvey’s debut book, The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family.

The impact of mass incarceration in America is far-reaching, as evidenced by the 2.7 million American children who have an incarcerated parent. Harvey’s own father served 27 years in prison, forever changing the very fabric of their family unit. In The Shadow System, Harvey reminds us that when people are incarcerated, we as a society rarely consider the lives—and the people—left behind.

In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children. In Mississippi, a wife steels herself for her husband’s thirty-ninth year in prison and does her best to keep their sons close.

This book is a galvanizing clarion call to fix this broken system—a book aimed at writing us closer to justice.

Philadelphia staple, Uncle Bobbie's, will be the official bookseller for this event. Order your copy here.

Sylvia A. Harvey reports at the intersection of race, class, and policy. Her work has appeared in The Nation, VQR, ELLE, Colorlines, the Feminist Wire, the New York Post, and more. She is the recipient of a National Headliner Award and a National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Salute to Excellence award. The Oakland native holds a BA in sociology from Columbia University and a MS in journalism from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Harvey lives in New York City.

Akiba Solomon is a senior editor at The Marshall Project. She is an NABJ-Award winning journalist from West Philadelphia. The Howard University graduate has served as senior editorial director at Colorlines and has written about culture and the intersection between gender and race for Dissent, Essence, Glamour and POZ. Solomon has also been a health editor for Essence, a researcher for Glamour and a senior editor for the print versions of Vibe Vixen and The Source. Solomon recently co-authored How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance (Bold Type Books, March 2019).

In Conversation: Sylvia A. Harvey & Akiba Solomon