This Is My America is a piece of fiction; if this story were true, there wouldn’t be an immediate happy ending for the Beaumonts. They would continue to live in the same society, combating racial prejudice and inequality—with all the disadvantages and stains of post-prison survival and recovery. I wanted to leave my readers with hope but nevertheless reflect real-life struggles, which is why Tracy’s friend Tasha and her family are still on an uphill journey of life after prison at the end of the novel.

This Is My America’s DNA is embedded from beginning to end with complex topics that impact Black Americans today. The Beaumonts’ story showcases how generational trauma caused by mass incarceration reverberates throughout the Black American experience today. The story weaves past and present. It is based as much on Thurgood Marshall’s story told in Devil in the Grove as it is on Just Mercy. The present is still a reflection of the past.

The death penalty is one of today’s most horrifying examples of the legacy of slavery. This is why I selected the topic of the death penalty out of many issues of mass incarceration. This history began as early as 1619, when African slaves were brought to the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Legal bondage of those enslaved and their descendants continued until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment ended de jure slavery in 1865. During the Reconstruction era, Southern whites rebelled against the end of slavery, and a terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, was born. By 1870, Klan representation had expanded to almost every state. Slavery had ended, except as a punishment for a crime. So former slaves found themselves being charged with vague crimes like “loitering.” The country had profited from slavery, and prisoners became a viable exception for use of free labor.

Equality wasn’t realized for those who were freed. In 1896, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This “separate but equal” doctrine permitted separate public facilities as long as they were of “equal quality.” It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court revisited the doctrine. In the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, the Court found “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional in public schools. Major legislation followed in the next decade: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.