This week I intend to finish my first book for the project, Dead Man Walking (1992) by sister Helen Prejean. The book is sort of memoir/non-fiction with a lot of philosophical and spiritual interjections, because Sister Prejean is a Catholic nun. The book details her experiences working as a  spiritual advisor for two men on death row in the infamous Angola Louisiana State Penitentiary. Last year in Calvin’s Mass Incarceration class, we listened to a podcast recorded in the San Quentin prison (also notoriously bad) interviewing death row inmates. It was really helpful to have that first-hand accounts as background on death row because the book is written from Sister Prejean’s first-person, so there aren’t many details on the day-to-day life of death row inmates, and its more about her relationships with the people involved in the whole structure of Louisiana prisons and executions. I really really like the book because I think she does a really good job of detailing her relationships with Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie, the two men she advises, who were both convicted rapists and murderers. Unrelated specifically to my project, the book has exposed me to a lot about Louisiana cajun culture, because most of the people in the book are Cajun. I definitely also want to watch the movie after finishing the book.