The Torture Letters
Reckoning with Police Violence
by Laurence Ralph
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Pub Date Jan 09 2020 | Archive Date Sep 16 2019
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Description
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police.
In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protestors, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protestors, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it.
With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Advance Praise
"[A] deeply caring work. . . An essential primer on the roots of police violence."—Publishers Weekly
“Indispensable.”—Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning
“A powerful and blunt reminder that regimes of torture persist not because of the exceptional depravity of a few but because of the passive complicity of many.”—Eve L. Ewing, author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard
“Ralph is a brilliant writer, able to draw us into the lives of people across Chicago with compelling, empathetic prose.”—Clint Smith, author of Counting Descent
Marketing Plan
Full press kit available here: https://bit.ly/2KBESxj
Full press kit available here: https://bit.ly/2KBESxj
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780226650098 |
| PRICE | $19.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 248 |
Featured Reviews
Librarian 356790
When approaching a nonfiction book about such a heavy topic written by a Princeton University professor, it's normal to assume that it's going to be a slow and difficult read. But in this case, you would be wrong.
Written as a series of open letters to victims, witnesses, and past and future leaders of Chicago, the book focuses on the (unfortunately radical) premise that torture is ALWAYS wrong, whether the victim is a wrongly accused innocent or a "bad guy." It is an engrossing page turner, and not at all what I was expecting.
It is a shocking indictment of the Chicago political system, which had for decades protected torturers and silenced victims. As someone who had grown up in the Chicago area, I was disgusted to read familiar names and hear of their roles in cover ups; some of these people are still in power.
However, there will still stories of hope in darkness, highlighting the work done recently by young activists in bringing light to crimes, and small steps towards reform in the Chicago Police Department.
It certainly challenged me to open and soften my heart towards perceived threats and not to buy into a societal fear that expects crime around every corner. Fear, the book reasons, leads to violence and torture, and we must be brave enough to say enough.
Also, it was not a religious book by any means, but it still spoke to me as a Christian in its assertion that inside all of us is a basic and inalienable holiness in our humanity, wherein no one should be subject to torture, whether you are an unrepentant killer or simply someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Anna I, Reviewer
I have never read anything like this, I have no words. Laurence Ralph did an excellent job gather information from multiple resource (focus groups, and interviews) to create these letters of police torture. I’m not kidding I was in tears reading parts of this book. I’m still processing, but my God, this is a must, must read.
Many thanks to Univ. of Chicago & NetGalley for gifting me this copy.
Mahi S, Reviewer
Extremely valuable insight into the history of policing in Chicago. Contains wonderful statistics that push the conversation about defunding forward. A heart wrenching book that strikes the right balance of taking the subject seriously but avoiding a glorification of violence
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