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by Ri Bornstein
The Master Plan opens on the moments before the author, Chris Wilson, takes the only opportunity he will have to advocate for his freedom from a life long prison sentence. He describes the trip from his prison cell to the witness stand methodically, recalling each interaction with guards and prisoners verbatim, relaying the questions that coursed through his mind along the way. The stakes and anxiety of this pivotal event are extraordinary. Even so, the author’s honest, uncomplicated reporting of his internal and external circumstances grounds the re-telling. As we are led through Chris’s life growing up amidst the American drug war and within the prison system The Master Plan emerges as his persistent, grounded doctrine for self-determination and forgiveness. His struggles for freedom, respect and self-acceptance are unimpeachable arguments for a revolution in how we understand institutional punishment and personal transformation in America.
The memoir begins with Chris’ early life amidst the extraordinary violence on Division St. in Southeast Washington, D.C. and in Prince George’s County Maryland in the 1980’s and 90’s. He describes the crack epidemic from a child’s perspective, sleeping on the floor of the bedroom in his grandmother’s house to avoid stray bullets. He loves to read and discovers Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in a children’s book of myths. He refers to this period as “The Cave”. Chris is one of Plato’s cave-dwellers, shackled to the rock, staring at shadows, believing the fear and doubt of his circumstances are the only way the world works.
His initial descriptions of his mother, on the other hand, offer the first moments of uplifting energy. “Mom loved me openly. She enjoyed me. Her smile made me believe that happiness was possible and that the world was more than hustling to put food on the table. Grandma taught me to work, but Mom taught me to dream”. Although he refrains from drawing the connection explicitly his capacity to sustain the vision of a Master Plan must in part be due to this period of unconditional love and the dreaming his mom encouraged.
Unfortunately, early in Chris’ life, his mom begins to sink into tragic circumstances. She dates a man he refers to only as “the cop”. She and the cop get into heavy drug use and his Mom spends less and less time with Chris. Chris walks in on several episodes of the cop physically abusing her.
One night, now thirteen years old, Chris comes home to find the cop assaulting his mother again. He attempts to intervene and the cop inflicts intense violence on both Chris and his mother after which Chris watches, helplessly, as the cop sexually assaults his mother. Chris acknowledges that after this episode his mother and he are intrinsically damaged.
When I started reading I assumed I would be disturbed by scenes of violence from the drug war and the prison system. I did not anticipate how physical and sustained those reactions would be. My stomach twisted while I read the chapter on the assault. I had vague, directionless nightmares the night afterward. As Chris’ fatigue deepened over the following chapters, I found I was looking up from the page disoriented, off balance, thoroughly bound up in his pain.
After the assault Chris turns to friends and cousins on Division Street for community. Gun violence, and partying, become routine. His cousin is murdered by a rival. A close friend is killed soon after that. An investigating officer shows Chris a map of the ten square blocks of his neighborhood which details more than eighty murders over the course of the past six years.
During an afternoon walk down the road out in the county he is pursued by two adults. They threaten him, intimating that they know where his mother lives. Chris draws a gun, fires at the men, and runs. He kills one of them.
Chris is picked up by the police a few weeks later. Eventually, at the age of seventeen, he is sentenced to life in prison for the murder.
Chris begins to formulate his Master Plan over the course of the next section of the memoir. He is assigned to the Patuxent youth prison on a six-month probationary period. As a “lifer” he assumes, and is terrified of the prospect that he will eventually be transferred to the harder Annex with the general population of the prison. Chris’ remaining family slowly distance themselves from him over his first few months on the inside and he begins to realize that he will have to survive his incarceration alone.
The initial plan is the first of many generations of lists, some of which are re-created from memory and re-printed in the book. The list is a mixture of commitments to new behaviors and “endgames”.
That’s the question I ask people when I think they’re ready to make a move. It’s the question I want everyone to ask themselves-and keep asking: “What’s my endgame?”
Why are you here on planet earth? Where do you want your life to go? Okay, you got your high school degree, that’s good, but why? Where is it taking you? How can it help you get there? (What’s Your Endgame?)
The Master Plan includes endgames like learning foreign languages, traveling the world, buying a Corvette, and meeting a beautiful, business savvy woman. He commits to “Stop calling home every day” “Always seek advice”, and “Work out six days a week (gain thirty pounds of muscle)”.
“Positive delusions” are another important supporting concept he develops: daydreams that can be acquired by focusing on his endgame. “If you do the work, you deserve the reward”. His first visions are cut from magazines and collaged together. Dune buggies driven through the desert and parties on balconies in South Beach Florida.
In the first years of his incarceration Chris is laser focused on living by and for the plan. He finishes his GED and throws himself into the prison carpentry program. He spends his free time reading or exercising. “It’s the action, not just the reward,” he summarizes. “It’s being the artist, not just admiring the view. That’s the endgame. Do you understand?”
He accomplishes incredible things: founding a tutoring center, painting murals, kickstarting a successful portrait business, creating and financing a newly independent youth prisoners council with the proceeds of the business, and helping to begin a bachelors program in the prison. His tenacity is relayed in the same even, temperate style with which he describes the violence of his early life.
Whether he is accomplishing a goal or processing a loss, Chris level-headedly returns to the promise of the Master Plan. He does not often describe extreme emotions like despair or rage. His temperament reminded of my first reading of The Autobiography of Malcom X. Alex Haley invited me to experience my own consciousness raising alongside Malcolm as he disentangled the etymology and history of white supremacy and committed himself to the discipline of Islam. The memoir’s honesty about Malcolm’s dismay, mourning, resentment, and determination were avenues to follow, for me, from disempowerment to the willpower necessary for radical commitment. Similarly, Chris’ framework for the life-long work of fulfilling the plan protects his psyche, and buoys our reading, from the dehumanization of prison.
We get to experience the emotional maturing of this philosophy as Chris fulfills the plan point of attending every group therapy available in the prison. He dislikes sharing and reflecting in a group and he admits that after nine years of imprisonment he is losing faith in his capacity to stay committed to the plan as he watches younger and less disciplined prisoners in group therapy come and go. Alongside this, after nearly a decade imprisoned and an incredible commitment to change and good works, his lawyer believes Chris’ story could motivate a judge to reduce his sentence. Between his weariness and the new possibility for release, Chris describes arriving at remorse as a deepening of his commitment to change:
Remorse isn’t feeling bad about what you have done. It’s not “accepting responsibility”. I had done that years before. Remorse is bigger. It is acknowledging that you did something irrevocably wrong, followed by the overwhelming feeling that you need to dedicate your life to making up for that sin.
It’s powerful. It’s wonderful. It’s the only thing that will free you from the hate you feel inside. Remorse is what held me up during times of stress and depression. It’s what helped me through those long crushing years. It’s a purpose, lifting you up…
(Remorse)
This sense of purpose sustains Chris until an eventual hearing with Judge Cathy Serrette. His work inside the prison and the newest generation of the Master Plan, which focuses on Chris’ continuing education and the building of businesses in Baltimore to employ others returning to civil society from prison, motivates the judge to grant him a greatly reduced sentence. She tells Chris that she expects him to continue to follow his Master Plan.
A fascinating third of the memoir is devoted to Chris’ attempts to fulfill this promise living and working Baltimore. He works strenuously against the stigma of being a former convict in nearly every aspect of his life. He reveals and hides his past from potential employers, business associates and friends. He searches vainly for work when no employer will hire him. He lives on couches for months when no landlord will rent to him. He struggles to create a successful construction firm when no loan officer will lend him money.
Once again, Chris develops a positive philosophical shift to sustain himself amidst this adversity. As he maneuvers through these obstruction with help from friends and mentors he begins to advocate for a re-framed identity from former convict to “returning citizen”.
Chris allows the frustration that motivates this philosophical commitment to be fully on display. He argues that the gate-keepers at every level of society are actively or passively pushing for his re-incarceration. Returning citizens who are required to present their past crimes as active parts of their identity are unable to demonstrate rehabilitation. Just importantly, they are barred from participation in democratic society. A former convict’s citizenship is challenged so persistently it as if their past crimes were committed in the present.
In the introduction, author Wes Moore frames the memoir as an emerging philosophy:
“We are all better than our worst decisions, our sense of justice should honor the redemptive possibilities inherent in every person, and our destinies are truly intertwined”.
Throughout the memoir we read about the prejudgement that Chris and any other returning citizen is unworthy of redemption. Part of the power of the memoir is Chris’ return to his worthiness, again and again, through his commitment to transformation. The Master Plan is a list of concrete goals but Chris’ capacity to re-invest again and again in the plan’s promise, when all other investments are closed off to him, is the living practice of the philosophy Moore describes.
Chris estimates that 70% of people currently incarcerated want to rehabilitate and change their lives. He believes that anyone can develop a master plan to achieve personal transformation. He advocates for a major shift in public policy devoted to education and care in prison which will authentically support imprisoned people’s rehabilitation. He also believes it is up to each imprisoned person to take what opportunities they can and work tenaciously to achieve the endgames of their own master plans.
The Master Plan is a lived philosophy with no punches drawn. While Chris may not delve into all of his pain, he offers us his strength as an example and an aid for all of our own liberation.