Have you ever wanted a safe space where you can just exist, where for a moment in time, you can be you, with all the intricacies and parts of you that people don't always understand. Welcome to in the deep stories that shape us. I'm your host, Zach Stafford, and each episode we create a space to be you, all
of you and all your messy and complicated glory. Every story shares what it means to be a black and Latin X man living with different hardships, whether it's a struggle of identity, discrimination or health, and how they've managed to push forward despite the circumstance. We hope to get closer, even it's just a little to a road of healing
and understanding. Hey everyone, welcome back. So today I want to talk about something that affects us all I think, and that's the idea of how we see ourselves versus how others see us. How many times do people think they actually know our story, the real story based on assumptions or cheeky photo we've posted online, or some water cooler talk we've had in passing, And how many times have others just gotten it all wrong? Ian Manuel's life
is one of those stories. That we think we've heard before, and chances are you've probably heard his story narrated by countless journalists covering the events of one late summer day that completely changed the course of his life at fourteen, or maybe you've heard about the prolific lawyer Brian Stevenson who helped him gain his liberty after twenty six years of imprisonment. But Ian's story doesn't begin and end with
a bout robbery attempt. It begins with his mother and brother, who deeply, deeply hurt him, and his grandmother, who did her best to give him a semblance of a normal childhood. Growing up in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida. I
grew up in a single parent home. But my grandmother, Lynda Johnson, spoiled me rotten because you know, I felt like later on in life and evaluating why she spoiled me so much was the fact that she didn't take care of our own child, my dad, Jimmy, So she poured all the love that she didn't give my dad into me. I went to Catholic school for a first grade and second grade and half a third grade. I received awards and reading and writing. I was very artistic,
meaning I could draw real good back then. But you know what they say, when you don't practice something, it has a tendency to leave you. So I started getting in trouble later on, around age eleven, man in the sixth grade, hanging with the wrong crowd. But before then, man, you know I was I was brought up by my mother, Peggy Manuel, and she loved me the best she could. But we had a mutualist relationship as well. When I was with my grandmother, there was nothing but love. When
I was with my mother, that was loving anger. She was a Gemini and I actually seen uh both sides of that personality. Uh you know, that was stuff good and gentle side, and then there was this angry you know, as I talk about in my book, my time would come. You know, my mother used to say things to me that I don't think any woman should ever say to a child, like I found you on my doorstep, or why were you so dog skinned? You know, it had
a bad effect on me. Man. I used to take bleached baths to try to make my skin It's like uh complexion that my mother would careful and love more. You know, I love my dog skin now, but at the time. You know, the hurtful thing she said to me made me not want to be dark. So I love spending time with my grandmother because I knew there was not gonna be two sides of the corn with her. There was gonna be one side, and that was strictly
unconditional love. And you know, grandmother would take me to Tampa Bay Mall when I was a kid, and she used to work. She worked twenty six years. She didn't know how to read and write. I remember her. She get over time and check from Morrison Cafeteria and her social Security check and she take them to the bank.
And I fear that we was gonna leave the bank empty handed at them all because the teller would say, um Ms Johnson, can you just sign your name and I'll get you your money, And my grandmother would invariably always say I don't know how to spell my name, and the teller would say, that's all white, Mrs Johnson,
just signed X, that's good enough. And I felt a huge relief because in my mind I had all these fantasies and dreams of that I was gonna get this toy and that toy and these cookies and uh so when they tell us that we were still gonna be able to cast those checks. It was a huge relief to me. But growing up and as I got old, I was like, Wow, my grandmother couldn't even read it write, and that's what I do better than anything in the world.
So it was something to think about. The love that Ian received from his grandmother was a complete one, a v from the relationship he had with his mother. But there was one other person that really let him down, his brother. And through these experiences of high highs low lows, he was marked by the outside world, one that should have protected him as quote a problem that's managed inside the walls of an institution. So initially, my brother was somebody that I looked up to. He was a very
popular guy in the city, in the neighborhood. He was like, uh, the leader of the neighborhood. We didn't have gangs in Tampa, but we had neighborhoods against neighborhoods that would fight each other. They called him Big John John And so seeing how everyone respected my brother, I wanted to be like him. I wanted to grow up to have that type of name recognition. You know. I love my brother for a long time, and and he was somebody that I looked
up to at the time. My brother took advantage of me and sexually abused me when I was like six years old, when I was in kindergarten, and uh, you know, I couldn't understand it why he would do something like that, But it was something that that happened and he was incarcerated for and something that we never really talked about after he was released from jail. We just like put it behind us. But I can honestly say that he broke a bond between us man because he used to
protect me all the time. So I'll never be able to understand and comprehend why he would do something like
that to someone he loved and cared for. He's deceased now, But I think everyone was ashamed that had occurred, the person that did it, the mother that allowed it to happened under her roof, and the person that had happened to you know, I think that was just a sense of shame, and so to not deal with that pain, which I feel now as an adult looking back on it, to not speak on it really just buried the pain within and no one never got to totally heal from it,
you know, and you you have to address things that happened. Man, It's something that I feel like we left on the table that shouldn't have been left on the table. Ian as a young boy at this point being emotionally and physically abused by the people and systems that are supposed to protect him, and then in the midnight eighties he has to face a new reality his mom being diagnosed with HIV. Now, surprisingly, my mother was very vocal about
being HIV positive. It wasn't something that she heard from the world, me or anybody. Uh. She started doing AIDS awareness work, taking me with her to pass out AIDS pamphlets condoms throughout several neighborhoods in Tampa. She'd take me to the AIDS quote when it came to Tampa and we signed our name. That AIDS quote I think still floats around America somewhere. I probably could go find my
name on it if I'm lucky. But seriously, she was just very vocal and outspoken about being HIV positive and hammered at home in my brain to right now, to this day, I don't have unprotected sex. Even when I had a girlfriend like I would have protected sex, and so it's you know, that's something that I'm very, very afraid of contracting HIV because my mother died of that disease.
I lost the person that I loved a lot to a horrible disease, and I swar to myself that I would do everything to protect myself from ever contracting the virus. You know, I was a child, I couldn't envision my mother dying. My mother was still a healthy woman, like healthy in the sense that she was over two hundreds something pounds, like two thirty pounds, and I just couldn't comprehend my strong, vocal mother being torn apart by this terrible disease. She passed in June, like a week before
her birthday. Actually, uh, June eighth nine. Yeah, I remember, and uh vividly. I was in solitary confine it but uh the sergeant came and got me and UH took me to the chapel of the prison chapel, and uh on the walk to the chapel, the guy, the sergeant asked me, um, and has anyone in your family been sick? And I was like, yeah, my mom. And you wouldn't believe the thoughts that you're going the prayers that you're saying while you walk into the chapel, like, God, anybody
but my mom. Don't let it be my mom, Let it be my brother, Let it be anybody but my mom. That's this is the thoughts that's going through my head. And I got to the chapel and I just remember sitting down black guy afro glasses. I sat across from her, and he said, Uh, your brother called, and so right then I knew it wasn't my brother, Like my word spears was about to be realized. And he said, Uh, your brother called and told me your mother had passed away,
and uh, I'm sorry. I called the hospital um to confirm and they have confirmed her death. And so now I'm giving you your phone call to your family to talk to your brother about what has just happened. And yeah, so I remember, and its vividens happened yesterday, and so even talking about it now, it's like I'm visualized being back in that office. This is almost like a therapy session because I haven't talked about this type of stuff in a while. Ian was nineteen years old, sitting in
solitary confinement when his mom passed. We've heard about the events that landed him in prison as a young boy countless times. Three older friends, the guys he considered his community, convinced him to head to the downtown area and commit a robbery. Ian says that the mom is leading up to the robbery were like a game of hot potato, the boys passing off the gun to one another, indecisive about who would follow through with the robbery. Finally, his
friend Mikey, makes an executive decision. Give it to Ian. He's not scared, He'll do it, he says. They sat in the car waiting for the next random person to walk by to make their move, and the person who walked by was debbue Bakery and her friend. But as the young boys followed through with the plan to ask them for change for a twenty dollar bill, something happened that made her scream an Ian shot in a panic. A few days later, at only fourteen years old, he
was advised to plead guilty by his lawyer. Ian's mother also pressure him and to plead guilty, promised the sentence of fifteen years. He agreed, but instead he was sentenced as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole. First of all, I couldn't comprehend life without parole. I had just turned fourteen two weeks prior. All this legal jargon at the time didn't mean nothing to me. A life sentence, I thought was twenty years. I did
not know life meant until your demand. I did not know life meant that I would not be released until the end of my life. Um So the only thing going through my mind was I was going to prison and I was not going home. That's what I comprehended. That's the only thing that I could comprehend. I wrote my mother in prison, blaming her for being in prison with a life sentence, and I distinctively remember her writing me back, saying, boy, don't try to lay that guilt
trip on me. Had you not been out there robbing and shooting people, your ask when being prisoned quote unquote. But I really took it to heart, you know, not trying to blame other people for my problems, but that I would not have had a life sentence. Had and I probably would have, but you know, who knows, I was thirteen. Maybe the jury would have had some leaning and seeing on me. You know, I don't know, but I just felt that my mom misled me man, and she she failed as a mother to protect me from
the system. I just don't know how you moved past that. Did you ever moved past it with her before she passed? Uh? To be honest, I don't think I ever did. I don't think I ever did, because I felt like she let me down at one of the most vulnerable times in my life. So to recap Ian his fourteen a literal child sitting in solitary confinement, being raised by correctional officers, and a system that failed to protect him. But even through these lonely moments, his imagination kept him going and
sparked a new love for an unexpected interest poetry. Confinement calms. The first day that I entered in prison, but I was only for three weeks. I was placed in solitary confinement the first day I went to prison based on the fact that I was fourteen, but that was only for three weeks at the reception center. After that, I
was transferred to an adult prison. While I was placed in jail, a real population and giving all the privileges if you can call them that, as an adult prisoner, and uh, I rebelled because I wasn't an adult and the officers would yell at me. I would yell back. I would do typical teenage behavior, stuff like I would be in an unauthorized areas what new kids do when they're young, They're in places they're not supposed to be. The officers would curse at me. I would curse back.
I would get in fights. I uh walk in the grass when I was supposed to walk on the sidewalk, and all of that would I would get right ups. And if you get enough, right up, and they label you a management problem, unable to be controlled in the general population. So I was placed in long term solitary confinement in November nineteen ninety two, and it was a place I would stay until November two thousand ten. So for eighteen secutive years I was in solitary confinement. You're
a kid growing up in solitary confinnment by yourself. What she was going through your head during this time? Are you reading? How are you taking care of yourself? What were the days like? Oh? They were boring. It was filled with monotoney. You know. I had to find my way. Man, I was growing up in prison. But not only was I growing up in prison, I was boring up inside of a cell, the size of a walk in closet or freight elevator. You know, so it was difficult, man,
I'm not gonna lie. I started out reading urban novels, Donald Goran's Iceberg Slim, and then, you know, over the years, my mentality grew. You know, I started reading fountain Head by An rand Uh, The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zoukal, The Power of Now by E Cart Totally the autobiography of Malcolm X. I read thousands of books in solitary, but the thing that changed my life Albert Einstein says that imagination is more important than knowledge, and
it was my imagination that sustained me. Thank God for my childlike imagination. Someone sent me Tupucks Currents book The Roles that Grew from Concrete, and I fell in love with the poetry, and I started rewriting two part poems and sharing with my fellow prisoners. And then the prisoners loved it so much they started paying me to write their girlfriends and their wives poetry. And next thing, you know, man, I I felt alive again. I felt something of value
that happened to offer the world. I mean, you don't know what It's like the first poem that I wrote that really got some recognition was a born called Genie in the Bottle, and it's about solitary confinement, and I love to share it with you right now. It says I'm the genie in the bottle. The world has forgotten. They put me in this abyss and closed up the top. I was a little boy when they did what they did, but time continued to tick, and I'm no longer a kid.
My mother is dead and so is my father. I've been abandoned by family while trapped in this bottle, but I hold on the hope that someone will open the top, answer my prayers and help me out. Sometimes people pick up the bottle and put that eye to the whole. But instead of compassion, acting different and cold, I suffer sensory deprivation, a lost sense of direction. There's no mirror
in this bottle for me to see my reflection. They say, being lonely and alone are two different definitions, but it's only me in this bottle, so I fit both descriptions. What I need is a friend, someone to extend the hand. It could be as simple as picking up a pen, someone who cares accepts me for who I am, my magna netic personality and my baggage from the past. Someone who helps here the sorrow will work on building out to morals. Someone who refuses to leave me to die
in this bottom. It allowed me to reclaim my sense of freedom. Listen, God gives each and every one of us a gift. My gift just happens to be the ability to compose words and ways that move people. People ask me, how did you survive? Man? You know, not only did I survived. I survived with my sanity, my talent, and my humanity and tact and that was a tall
order to do. But I will say, despite all of that, I would have died in prison had it not been for Brian Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative taking my case and two thousand six and eventually appealing to the U. S. Supreme Court to overturn all juvenile life sentences that lead to my release in two thousand sixteen. So despite the freedom that I felt in writing, my physical freedom would have never came had it not been for God sending
me the best lawyer in America. When you found out these cases were being appealed and that you had won. What was that day? Where were you? What was going on in your head? I was listening to a small a m FM transistor radio and solitary confoundly that I
shouldn't have had that someone had smuggled to me. And I was listening to NPR, and um it came on and like at the top of the hour, like one o'clock, and they said, and the U. S. Supreme Court, in a five four decision has overturned all life sentences for juveniles if they have not committed a non homicide crime. And they went on to the next story. And I had to wait thirty agonizing minutes to hear this again.
And when I listened to it again, they said a six three decision, but it was still in my favorite and I just screamed, man, I just screamed loud. I'm like, it's over, it's over. I just remember screaming it's over,
and I thought it was, but it wasn't. Because when I went back to court in two thousand and ten, thinking I was gonna be released because my sentence was deemed cruel and unusual punishment and unconstitutional, the State of Florida said, your honor, we are killing the U. S. Supreme Court decision, and everyone in the court room was stunned because there was like, there's nothing to a field. This came from the highest court in the land, and they said, trying to catch twenty two Yes, yea honor.
But the U. S. Supreme Court said, this is for juveniles who committed non homicide offenses. Mr Manual committed attempted homicide, which falls under the homicide statue, so we don't believe that this law should apply to him. So they sent me back to prison, and they appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, who refused to hear their appeal. They appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, who denied search where
meaning they denied. They appealed as well. And I went back to court in two thousand eleven thinking I was going home, but I didn't. I got back into judge said something before he went in his chambers to deliberate, to let me know I wasn't going home that day.
He said there was a statement made about rehabilitation. However, when Mr Manuel's crime happened, the legislative intent was to punish, not rehabilitate, And he went in his chambers to deliberate, and he came back out, and he afforded my life sentences, and in place of my life sentences, he sentenced me to sixty five years in prison. I went back to prison, and I wrote this poem called My Time Will Come.
The poem says, I promise you the print of my question has a purpose, and the same person that you persecute will one day be worshiped. Though I stand before you, bat chested and shirtless, with my soul and emotions naked, just wanting to be nurtured. Yeah, despite the desperation, desertion,
and hurting, my time gonna come. Though I compose this poem not knowing if I'll ever be able to perform it in an auditorium, I do it with the faith of a poet that believes he was born to do it, like an acorn caught up in a storm, flung from the branch where it was born. You can only hold me back for so long. My time gonna come. Despite
the difficulties and disappointments. My determination remains undaunted. Though the waters of my tomorrows are deep and uncharted, the buoyance of my character will float on, wavering towards him like a song written yet unrecorded. My time gonna come. Though you wrap me and change and sprayed me with chemical flames and did all of the things you did to
add to my pain, my circumstances will change. I believe it's with the depths of my being that as long as this world continues to spend, it cannot end until it's been enjoyed by end. Remember this day because things won't always beat its way. My time gonna come, My time gonna come against all conceivable odds. My time gonna come. If five years later I was released. Wow, did you think about that poem when you find out you're being released? I definitely did, And that's why it's the tide of
my book. My time will come. In the traditional sense, we often find ourselves starting a process of forgiving with others, but Ian how to approach forgiven us from the thin and slowly start expanding to those who he had wronged and those that had wronged him. Even before the overturn of his life sentence, he thought a lot about forgiveness, especially when it came to his victim who survive the robbery I called Debbie when I was fourteen years old.
My lawyer at the time had sent me all of my legal documents, and I saw in the police report Debbie's address and phone number, and I just felt compelled to reach out to her. My grandmother didn't raise me to hurt people. That's not who I am as a person. And so I called Debbie collect. You know, back then you could just press zero and get a live operator. I don't even know if that still works these days, right, But I called Debbie. She accepted the call. She said,
can you ask him his last name? And I said, yes, Manual, and she said, with a tentative voice, yes. I except and I don't remember a lot about that first phone call, except I said I'd like to wish you and your family a merry Christmas and to apologize for shooting you in the face. And then Debbie asked me a question that no fourteen year old should ever have to answer. She said, Ian, why did you shoot me? And I said, Debbie, it all happened so fast, it was a mistake. And
we talked. The fifteen minute phone call ended. I asked, could our call back? She said yes? And all I remember about the second phone call was asking could writer and she said yes, and That's how corresponded started and we eventually developed a friendship. And I believe every human being has these desires to do things, impulses to act, and yet we pushed these ideas to these feelings down,
like in another word, it's a crazy idea. And I have found in my forty four years of existence that every time I've listened to that call of my heart and not pushing it aside, it has led to some extraordinary things, whether that was calling Debbie at fourteen, whether that was writing the US Senator Bill Nelson when I was in solitary confinement, and I didn't know it at the time because I was fourteen, but I know it now as an older spiritual person that that's what I
was doing. Man, I was following my heart and not pushing the idea down, even though it was a crazy idea. Called the lady, you shot and have a conversation with it, like most people are gonna gonna report you to the authorities first of all, gonna run far away from you. But it worked. She accepted the call, and you know, we became friends. And I have a phone number right now and context or caller right now to this day.
Sometimes people get it wrong about punishment. You know, when I was in prison, every time they would execute somebody at an electric chair or the guernee at Florida State Prison, I would turn on NPR the next morning and I would listen to the family members say this is what my uncle, my brother, my dad, my mother would have wanted. Justice has been served. But by debt be surviving, not dying. No one could tell that story for her. Only she could come forth and say what she wanted. And she
wanted me out of prison. Right. That was forgiveness. Man. It was a process that she didn't forgive me instantly. It was a growth process. It was her seeing me my true self, that I wasn't a bad person, that I wasn't trying to intentionally kill her, you know. And I'm just thankful that she survived and was able to tell her own story. Instell of having angry husband say this is what my wife would have wanted Ian to die in prison. You know, I'm showing the world, first
of all, that I deserved a second chance. And I am also a manifestation that dreams actually do come true. Because getting out wasn't good enough for me. I didn't want to just get out. I didn't want to just survive. I wanted to flyve. I used to dive within the depths of my imagination. I'm gonna be this big superstar rapper when I get out, gonna have a movie. I'm gonna do a book, and I have a book. I
signed a movie deal. And there's so much more that I'm doing with my life that shows that the system, if it could, just throws people away. And it's my belief that there's thousands of more eends in prison that deserve a second chance. And by me thriving out here, I mean I give emails and letters from prisoners all the time saying, and you gotta make it man. You give us hope, You show us that this is possible. Man,
make it man. And so I'm inspired by the people I left behind, and I just try to keep it really through my authenticity by being myself. Well, I'm a manifestation that dreams come true. Man, So follow your dreams,
stick to him, and believing yourself non't matter what. Ian brings us an idea that's so special and yet so simple that our circumstances do not have to define our ability to lose touch with what makes us human, and it's the ability to continue dreaming even in the most desolated places, or forgiving those that have wronged us, those we have wronged, or even forgive ourselves for past mistakes that keeps us on track to internal peace and healing. This has been in the deep stories that shape us.
Find this episode in others on the i Heeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Don't forget to share, rate, and review if you enjoyed this conversation. The show is for duced by Yvonne Chien and mastered by James Foster. Our show researcher is Jordan Raggio and our writer is Vette Lopez. A special shout out to our guest Ian Manuel. I'm your host Zach Stafford.