By addressing the impact of incarceration on black lives, Cell Persona draws attention to an aspect of society that prevents the world from reaching Utopia and the “restless yearning for a more livable, just, and meaningful world.” Indeed, Cell Persona is about the far psychological and civic reach of incarceration into the lives of persons and their families’ ability to participate in democratic life even after incarceration. The disenfranchisement of blacks due to incarceration is what Michelle Alexander explores in her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

My cells discover the fact that disproportionately black persons populate our prisons and the cell reaches beyond its interior. Again, the exploration is two-fold in exploring the reach beyond the actual cell and the reach of incarceration beyond an individual’s prison sentence. The forms dramatize both the reach of incarceration but primarily my own personal, emotional, experience of working with families with incarnated loved ones. Under the present laws a literal felon label and a cell mentality becomes part of the life of freed persons and their families perpetually.