Interview with Mandi Zapata

Alexa Garza interviews Mandi Zapata about her experience of 6 years in prison, and together theorize about alternatives to way the prison system is run. They look comparatively on life inside and outside prison, and talk about the way the prison experience haunts them when they leave prison walls. Some revelatory moments in this interview are when Zapata calls felons a unique "race" made up of people of many races: subject to forms of discrimination different from those associated with skin color. Zapata also talks about how her prison experience permanently changed the way she currently perceives the world, often noting how reintegrating into society is like integrating to life in "another prison".