This weekend we wanted to share some of our favorite stories about Thanksgiving behind bars. Writing for The Daily Beast, Daniel Genis recalls how Thanksgiving was “the rare time when no one could say it was just another day in prison.” Genis, who served 10 years in a New York prison for armed robbery, describes how the ruthless racial order of his prison collapsed, for just one day every year. A day-long ritual of teams of men (segregated by race) preparing elaborate dishes by microwave eventually gave way to a short-lived moment of unity. “By the end of Thanksgiving, people from all races would eat together. They would not do so the next day, and never acknowledged that it had happened, but once a year it did.” Similarly, Jeffrey McKee calls the holiday “one of the few times when we set aside prison politics to watch the game or play cards together.” McKee, who is incarcerated in Washington state, describes how “guards usually look the other way” for people sharing items and dishes with one another, and how the pandemic disrupted this little respite: “There were no special spreads. We were mostly locked down.” Back in 2020, with the holiday season unsettled by the heights of the pre-vaccine pandemic, our colleague Keri Blakinger wrote about how her first Thanksgiving in prison was the best she’d had in years. She describes how her unit pooled commissary items and contraband spices into an amazing family meal of “pasta salad, spiced cabbage, rice, yams, turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and 10 or 15 different kinds of cakes and pies.” Her memory focuses on how the day was just a little bit kinder than others. No one fought. There was teamwork, hope — even redemption. Lastly, a digital archive of prison newspapers offers a peek into the history of the holiday behind bars, with menus from the 1960s, sporting event results from the 1980s, and a throwback to the mostly bygone era of holiday furloughs — when some incarcerated people would be released for 48 hours to spend Thanksgiving with family. While these stories are hopefully a bit more uplifting than the usual Closing Argument fare, it’s worth remembering that food behind bars is often disgusting, and fails to meet the standards of basic nutrition. And for people behind bars, even if the holiday offers a brief reprieve from some of the worst conditions, the day after things go right back to normal. | 
