How I Escaped the Prison of Anger

A Vietnam War veteran and activist tells his story in this memoir. In his nonfiction debut, Payton recounts his experiences as a young Black man drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, discussing the ways in which his experiences quickly took bad turns. He was court-martialed for assault and put in the Long Binh military stockade in Vietnam. While he was there, the other prisoners (mostly Black men) rioted and burned the prison; per the author, Black prisoners attacked white inmates and staff, holding some as hostages, while Payton looked on: “They had told me the only reason they wanted to set fires was as a diversion so they could escape.” After Payton was discharged and sent back to the States, he got a job in the dairy department of a supermarket but was quickly fired for assaulting his manager. By the 1980s, he was addicted to crack cocaine. The author entered VA drug rehab programs, where he began to come to terms both with his drug use and his lingering trauma from the war. He was mentored by Clarence Fitch and other members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “It hit me that I had to help spread the message that these men were spreading,” he recalls; “War is not the answer.” Payton is a dramatic, involving writer, and his colorful prose is enhanced throughout by Arthur’s grayscale illustrations. He has a sharp sense of the pivotal moments in his own life story; he bracingly recalls that when a Vietnamese student saw him looking at a Martin Luther King, Jr., book, he asked, “What makes you come over here and fight in Vietnam, when back in America in the South you can’t even eat at the lunch counter?” A vivid account of an angry and troubled man who became a dedicated anti-war crusader.