Reclaiming, story 6: Friends in Liminal Spaces

When Anastasia Sotiropoulos joined the Stanford chapter of the Prison Renaissance Project, she got paired up with a man named Adamu Chan, who had been incarcerated at San Quentin prison for two decades. Their relationship began a few weeks before the pandemic, and the first time they talked San Quentin was the site of one of the largest COVID outbreaks in the nation. Over the next three years, Anastasia and Adamu exchanged dozens of letters, had weekly phone calls, and dreamed of creating a film together. Neither of them could have imagined where that friendship would lead them: not just to Adamu’s release from San Quentin, but his admission to Stanford as a CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow. Today Adamu is an award-winning filmmaker and community organizer. Adamu and Anastasia have continued their friendship, and together created the 2024 podcast episode, Friends in Liminal Spaces, through the Stanford Storytelling Project’s Braden Storytelling Grant.