Prodigy (1974–2017)

Commissary Kitchen: My Infamous Prison Cookbook by Albert Prodigy Johnson is a difficult cookbook to rate. It has beautiful photography and a enticing cover. It answers some questions but leaves a few without any answers. I sometimes watch a reality TV show about life in prisons and have seen one episode on prison cooking. So that made interested in this book.

Albert Prodigy Johnson, who is a rapper and has traveled the world has also been in four prisons during his sentence. He says that prison food is terrible and I believe him. There is so much salt in the food and often inmates are often offered highly sugared drinks with the meals. Therefore, many leave with diabetes and hypertension that they did not have before. He has sickle cell anemia so he knew that he be very sick often if he depended on the prison food. I wanted to know more about his experience with sickle cell. Does he receive medicine for it, see a hematologist while in prison. How does he cope with it. He did say that exercise is necessity for him when coping with sickle cell and the prison does well in offering opportunities for that. He had never cooked before going to prison. He watched other inmates cook and improvised. Creating new recipes is a stress reliever and distracts him from his worries.

As for the recipes, I will not be trying any of them. Most of them just won't work for me as a diabetic and a vegetarian. A lot of what he does is takes the basic food that he is offered and tweek them with condiments that he is able to order, buy or receive from people on the outside. He has to deal with a lot of canned food as there is no way to keep anything refrigerated. So that pretty much eliminates frozen and fresh food which is much more nutritious.

If anyone is interested in prison reform, I think this should be required reading. Also, I would like to encourage the author to take some cooking classes to enrich his knowledge and enjoyment of his new hobby.

I received this finished copy by making a selection from Amazon Vine books but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in this review. I also posted this review only on sites meant for reading not for selling.… (meer)

Albert Johnson creates a stark, compelling portrait of the relentless tug between aspirations and loyalty in this gritty novella. Pappy is looking for a new life on the right side of the law, but he can't break free from his long criminal partnership with Black. In a predictable but action-packed plot, a reluctant Pappy is quickly roped back into the lifestyle he wants to give up. Facing one catastrophe after another, Pappy must find his own balance between his two worlds if he wants to survive in either of them.

The blistering pace of the plot means Pappy doesn't spend much time lost in deep thought, but as the default point of view character, his perspective on the action and his own internal conflict make him relatable and easy to root for. Black is more one-dimensional - he serves his role in the story but never quite comes alive. A longer book would allow for more character development and the opportunity to fill out the somewhat empty-seeming city the pair inhabit, but the details Johnson does include are well-chosen and revealing. "HNIC" is a solid & exciting, if short, tale of uneasy friendship and betrayal in the underworld, and will satisfy fans of street lit (not to mention Mobb Deep, Johnson's hip hop duo).… (meer)