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Super Friends Paperback – April 24, 2014

by Whitney Holwadel Smith (Author), Jeff Smith (Foreword)
5.0 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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In late 2008 twenty-four year old Cincinnati native Whitney Smith begins writing a blog he titles "Super Friends" from his solitary confinement cell at USP Terre Haute, where he is half-way through a 6 ½ year sentence for unarmed bank robbery. With no computer access, he mails handwritten entries to his father for posting. Before long he has hundreds, then thousands of readers from around the world. Writing about his past and present, Whit’s insightful account is scrubbed clean of self-pity and gives off an energetic ruefulness combined with a keen sense of humor. The blog entries reproduced here are interleaved for the first time with letters Whit and his father wrote to each other. This moving self-portrait provokes serious questions about the dysfunctional apparatus that is our federal prison system. As one early reviewer writes, “I am blown away by Whit's writing; his voice is clear, so funny, yet heartbreaking – and I can't stop reading."
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  1. Print length
    468 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 24, 2014
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 1.06 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1497544084
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1497544086
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 24, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 468 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1497544084
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1497544086
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.37 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.06 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
7 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers praise the book's writing quality, with one noting the self-taught author's uncanny talent. The pacing receives positive feedback, with one customer describing it as an intimate portrait of life incarcerated.

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4 customers mention "Writing quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing quality of the book, with one customer noting the author's unique voice and another highlighting their self-taught talent.

"...His writing was intelligent, fresh, and wry. He deserves to have the words read that he left behind." Read more

"...Though reticent in person, Whit’s voice in his writing was unique and powerful, even more impressive given the fact he was a 9th grade dropout, and..." Read more

"An important book written by a young white Middle-western man, wrestling with himself while trapped in the renowned US penal system...." Read more

"Intimate portrait of life incarcerated, well told..." Read more

3 customers mention "Pacing"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one describing it as an intimate portrait of life incarcerated.

"I found this book incredibly moving. Whitney Smith was a young man convicted of unarmed bank robbery...." Read more

"...Wrenching, memorable." Read more

"Intimate portrait of life incarcerated, well told..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Ellen
    5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant story about the avoidable loss of a promising young man
    Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I found this book incredibly moving. Whitney Smith was a young man convicted of unarmed bank robbery. Instead of the minimum security prison with drug rehab that the judge recommended, Whit was sent to a maximum security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. While there, Whit found himself on the periphery of a situation that led him to protracted time in solitary confinement. While there, Whit began a prison blog that he named "Superfriends."
    This book is a compilation of actual blogposts (which were handwritten and sent to his father to post) and letters between he and his father. Through his letters and blogs, Whit's humor, sensitivity, and intelligence shine. Whit hoped to become an English professor, and began taking correspondence courses through Ohio University. His hopes for rehabilitation and a brighter
    future were eroded by the false implication of him with a nearby violent encounter between fellow inmates. Faced with the (he thought) probability of protracted prison time, Whit took his own life. The gross unfairness of the policies of the Bureau of Prisons is apparent in what happened to Whit - a young man full of promise, who did not need to be sent to a maximum security prison with violent felons. The most poignant part of his story, for me, was the fact that his letters and blogposts did not hint at his despair - so great is the love he had for those in his life that were reading his words. His writing was intelligent, fresh, and wry. He deserves to have the words read that he left behind.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • William
    5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and profoundly moving look at what takes place behind prison walls
    Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Whitney Holwadel Smith committed suicide in solitary confinement at the maximum security Federal Correctional Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2009. This book not only serves as a powerful indictment of the cascade of injustices and bureaucratic mistakes that led to this, and are all too common in our criminal justice system, but more importantly brings to life a brilliant, though flawed, young man and the power of the enduring love he shared with his father and a privileged number of family and friends he touched with his magnificent writing from behind prison walls.

    Whit was a voracious reader and self-taught writer of uncanny talent whose collection of letter and essays invites the reader inside prison walls and into the peculiar and unforgiving ecosystem that is a maximum-security prison in the United States. His writing illustrates with both humor and moving insight the ways in which incarceration as practiced in much of America today often not only fails to rehabilitate, but can cause profound psychological damage.

    Following an attempted unarmed bank robbery to finance a drug habit, Whit was arrested and sentenced to six years.
    The judge recommended he be sent to a medium security prison, but instead he was ordered to the maximum security United States Penitentiary Terre Haute due to a bureaucratic oversight. This was the first, and most ruinous, of a series of mistakes by the Bureau of Prisons that would ultimately land Whit in Terre Haute’s Segregated Housing Unit (SHU), more commonly known as solitary confinement, or, more crudely, “the Hole,” for the last fifteen months of his life. Whit’s tale shows the reader that, contrary to common perception, the Hole is not solely reserved for the “worst of the worst,” the “Hannibal Lecters” of the popular imagination, but is instead often arbitrarily used to house prisoners for lengthy time periods for any number of non-violent, and sometimes even trivial, infractions. There is no judge or jury when it comes to the Hole. Prison management is instead often allowed to mete out this extreme punishment with minimal oversight.

    Though reticent in person, Whit’s voice in his writing was unique and powerful, even more impressive given the fact he was a 9th grade dropout, and essentially self-educated through a voracious appetite for reading that he developed in prison. Though darkly comic and ironic much of the time, his blog entries are laced with moments of touching sincerity and vulnerability.

    Whit's writing provides captures the daily rhythms of Whit’s life amongst some of society's most dangerous offenders, as well as an eclectic group of charismatic felons with whom he grew close, often simply by virtue of the fact many of them hailed from the Midwest. The harsh reality of prison life brought them together through a shared recognition that as “regs” – or regular prisoners with no gang affiliations – they would only survive by forming an alliance, and coming from the same part of the country made as much sense as anything else for the composition of their little fraternity.

    There are times when the absurd episodes Whit recounts, and eccentric personalities he grows to know, almost resemble "Seinfeld" episodes set in a federal prison. There is the 450 pound “Tiny,” who insisted on making off with the teller’s bag of Arby’s along with the money he stole when robbing a bank, and Wes, who was rumored to have once been a hit man and who, from New Year’s to Thanksgiving every year confidently insisted he would be out by Christmas (despite serving two life-sentences). Still, lurking beneath the humor that helps Whit and his cohort cope with their existence there is often an undercurrent of a profound melancholy.

    Whit and his buddies are a motley group, and would likely have little in common in the outside world. Whit’s less literary-minded peers marveled at the seemingly endless stack of books he was working his way through, and the hours he would spend quietly writing on his top bunk, or outside in their caged “rec area.” This book provides a look inside the mind of a young man haunted by trying to discover who he really is, the thoughtful writer of his blog, and letters to his father, or an impulsive criminal unable to resist the temptation of drugs and fast-living. It will also illustrate the ruinous effects solitary confinement can have on mental health. In this, his story is a microcosm of what has become a nationwide epidemic of placing too many prisoners in solitary confinement for too long, leading to psychological problems that only make it more difficult for them to re-assimilate into society, if they ever have the opportunity to try.

    His father’s exchanges with him, in their humor, advice, and moments of unguarded tenderness, reveal a father’s unconditional love for a son, and a son’s dependence on his father to survive psychologically. They developed imaginative ways to overcome their physical separation, such as tuning in to the same bluegrass radio program at the same time each week. Whit’s regular correspondents also included a young woman in France who discovered him in her online search for a prison penpal. They went on to develop a strong emotional and intellectual bond by trading long letters covering everything from rap music to classic literature to philosophy, an oddly archaic relationship in comparison to today's App-fueled romances initiated by swiping an IPhone to the right.

    An unwritten code governs every aspect of the prisoner’s life. As Whit would painfully learn, this code often collides with the prisoner’s own moral compass, not to mention prison rules, sometimes leading to Kafkian situations in which there are no good choices. One painful example of this occurred when the guards assigned a child molester to be Whit’s cellmate. Prison code required Whit to fight the cellmate or risk being beaten or perhaps even killed himself. The reader will witness Whit agonizing over this decision before reluctantly fighting the cellmate, even though it “went against every fiber of his being,” as his father observed.

    We will accompany Whit as he navigates his way through this dystopian world. It will gradually become clear that his being sent to a maximum security prison despite a non-violent crime may have in itself amounted to a death sentence. Whit had made serious mistakes in life, but was a gentle soul, and as such it would have been nearly impossible to emerge unscathed when deposited into a cauldron of violence and left to fend for himself among some men who were truly irredeemable, pathologically violent predators serving multiple life sentences for violent crimes.

    Like prisoners across the country, Whit was stunned and demoralized by how scarce opportunities were to improve himself through access to education programs, or some form of community service. At one point, increasingly frustrated at obstacles to his being able to enroll in an Ohio University distance learning program, he writes, “Never before have I heard of a greater resistance being mounted against a man trying to educate himself. Clearly the administration theorized that once I learned the intricacies of poetry I would immediately utilize my skills by mesmerizing the guard in a gun tower with Baudelaire recitals, eventually convincing him to look the other way as I scaled a fence.”

    While there is no escaping the fact that Whit’s story is a tragic one, a sliver of redemption can be found as he lives on through the impact his writing continues to have on readers and the undying love of his father and friends.

    This book reveals a deeply flawed penal system can sometimes do more harm than good to the society it is designed to protect. Are we even attempting to rehabilitate the nearly two million Americans we keep behind bars, or just resigned to keeping them off the streets while many of them inevitably descend deeper into criminality?

    Here is a brief writing sample of Whit’s, an excerpt from his blog that captures his internal struggles with his identity and the acceleration of his descent into a depression that would, in a matter of months, lead him to end his life. It is also a poignant illustration of his talent as a writer, whose insights and reflections are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them:

    "In just a few months I will be "celebrating" the milestone of having spent 7 of my 24 years as a prisoner. For 7 years I have done my best to convince whomever will listen that the future of Whitney Holwadel Smith is a bet worth wagering. I've prophesied the college degrees, the good jobs, the on-time mortgage payments and tax refunds. In my rhetoric to family and friends, who have all in their own way contributed to the "Whitney Smith Fund," I present a character in a vaguely written play who is unremarkable as a citizen and remarkable as a concept of myself, the two-time felon.

    With more than half of my current sentence done and a little over 3 years to go, I should be giddy about the prospect of proving my words to be more than just empty rhetoric. But the mundane nature of my life in the hole and the looming prospect of up to an additional 20 years being added onto my sentence for a trumped up new criminal charge has all but deadened my hope and anticipation. I have begun to wonder if all those things I claimed to my "contributors" are real or just a series of fictions that I have even convinced myself of.

    I am teetering on the edge of becoming institutionalized.

    It is impossible to truly know what it is to be institutionalized without actually experiencing it. To be institutionalized means to adapt your mind completely to life enclosed by walls and razor wire. It is the transformation of the outside world from a real place and a goal to simply a novelty; a queer thing that's written about in the newspapers but with about as much significance as Los Angeles has to a poor Ethiopian villager. Institutionalization occurs somewhere around the time when a prisoner says "I can't wait to get home" and is referring to his cell.

    I've spent 7 years trying to convince those I care about that I am worthy of their contributions. But are they empty promises? Will this be the only world I truly know? As my mind becomes slowly wrapped in the wet blanket of institutionalization, I am fearing so.

    But my promises and hope are all I have left; I cannot abandon them.

    These are the thoughts that consume a prisoner on a daily basis. This prisoner, at least."
    4 people found this helpful
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  • J
    5.0 out of 5 stars Intimate portrait of life incarcerated, well told
    Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    There was a time when I knew Whit Smith quite well. It's fun and heartbreaking at the same time to read these pages. A brilliant, broken lunatic bent on self destruction but also a very refined and fundamentally kind person. Whit, my guy, you deserved better from the "justice" system. See you next life my friend.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Alice Bach
    5.0 out of 5 stars Prison from the Perspective of a Young Inmate
    Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    An important book written by a young white Middle-western man, wrestling with himself while trapped in the renowned US penal system. The book is mainly a collection of letters Whit wrote to his father, who posted the almost daily communiqués as a blog, which caught the attention of many loyal readers. I would recommend the book to those who work on prison reform. Listen to this individual voice, two parts howl, two parts growl, two parts wit and wry humor, and two parts grief (that final part from the reader). Wrenching, memorable.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • chorse
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Wonderful
    One person found this helpful
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  • msangelad
    5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book-You'll be glad that you did.
    Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2014
    Read this book! It is a shining example of how our current (in) justice system fails so spectacularly on so many levels. The system calls itself "corrections" but the sobering reality is that it is in theory and not in practice. Over and over I found myself nodding in agreement to things Whitney said and wishing that I could respond to him. I never had the privilege of knowing Whit, but his sense of humor, his curiosity and hunger to learn come across vividly. This book is a testament to Whitney Holwadel Smith and the broken-ness of the U.S. Corrections, as well as a father's love for his son. It bears repeating: read this book. You'll be glad that you did.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • madeline
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend!
    Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2020
    This book is amazing , well written. Highly recommend!
    One person found this helpful
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