I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

After reading Jimmy Santiago Baca’s prison memoir A Place to Stand, Brown is reminded again of Dalin. To fund his rap career, Dalin became a drug dealer at the worst possible time, amid the signing of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill and a national crackdown on nonviolent drug offenders. After Dalin’s third arrest, he received a mandatory 10-year jail sentence. Though Brown hadn’t contacted Dalin since the start of his 10-year sentence, reading A Place to Stand spurs her to write to him in prison. Weeks later, she nervously opens his reply letter, in which he graciously responds to everything in her letter: “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more overwhelmed by another person offering me mercy and love” (142). A few weeks later, lightning strikes and kills Dalin while he is outside in the prison yard during a thunderstorm.

Brown overflows with anger—at God, at the state, at the police. She also looks inward to acknowledge that Black lives matter, even when they aren’t like hers. She writes that many will dismiss Dalin’s death because he is a drug dealer, a criminal, or a “thug” (145): “But the one word that will go unspoken is the word black.