Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.

M. In plain terms, stripped of the jargon of the social sciences, she shows us what can await if you are young, black, and unlucky in today’s United States.” - J. The pacing is brisk and novelistic, but the message is large and clear: we need urgently to reform the system through which we process juveniles who commit crime, because the current system perpetuates the very injustices it was designed to address.” - Andrew Solomon. Coetzee“In this narrative of freedom and incarceration, education and disadvantage, rehabilitation and punishment, Danielle Allen paints an unforgettable portrait of a cousin she loved. A loving cousin paying tribute to her brilliant and beloved but troubled 'cuz,' Allen hits a grand slam.” - Henry Louis Gate

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Danielle Allen is the James Conant Bryant University Professor at Harvard University and author of Cuz and Our Declaration, winner of the Parkman Prize.

When she finally welcomed her baby cousin home, she adopted the role of "cousin on duty," devotedly supporting Michael’s fresh start while juggling the demands of her own academic career.As Cuz heartbreakingly reveals, even Allen’s devotion, as unwavering as it was, could not save Michael from the brutal realities encountered by newly released young men navigating the streets of South Central. At thirteen, sensitive, talkative Michael Allen was suddenly tossed into this cauldron, a violent world where he would be tried at fifteen as an adult for an attempted carjacking, and where he would be sent, along with an entire generation, cascading into the spiral of the Los Angeles prison system.Throughout her cousin Michael’s eleven years in prison, Danielle Allen—who became a dean at the University of Chicago at the age of thirty-two—remained psychically bonded to her self-appointed charge, visiting Michael in prison and corresponding with him regularly. So tender yet courageous is this fierce family memoir that it makes mass incarceration nothing less than a new American tragedy.In a shattering work that shifts between a woman’s private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholar’s fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to