This story aired in the August 1, 2023 episode of Crosscurrents.
Jamel Powers has an entrepreneurial spirit. Since he’s been incarcerated, he’s started a cleaning business, and he also wants to buy and rent properties. Uncuffed Solano producer Anthony Ivy also has big ambitions: to be a personal trainer, sound engineer and podcast producer.
Powers is from Harlem, New York; Ivy is from North Stockton, California. And growing up, they both learned how to hustle, survive and dream big from their moms. Both their mothers were single women working in a man’s game: dealing drugs.
"For a woman living in a man’s game and having success, that’s something special,” Ivy says.
Ivy and Powers sat down at Solano State Prison to reflect on how their mothers’ hustle shaped their lives and their hopes for their own children.
This piece was brought to you by the team at Uncuffed and edited by Sonia Paul and Kathy Novak, with sound design from Eric "Maserati-E" Abercrombie. Our work in prisons is supported by the California Arts Council, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and donations from listeners like you. The producers fact-check content to the best of their ability. Content is approved by an information officer.
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