{"id":5888,"date":"2020-11-23T15:59:31","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T15:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/?p=5888"},"modified":"2020-11-23T15:59:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T15:59:31","slug":"yusef-salaam-writing-memoir-about-his-wrongful-imprisonment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/yusef-salaam-writing-memoir-about-his-wrongful-imprisonment\/","title":{"rendered":"Yusef Salaam writing memoir about his wrongful imprisonment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE – Honoree Yusef Salaam poses at the ACLU SoCal’s 25th Annual Luncheon in Los Angeles on June 7, 2019. Salaam, one of the five teens wrongly imprisoned for the assault of a Central Park jogger, has a memoir coming out in the spring. Grand Central Publishing announced Monday that it had acquired Yusef Salaam\u2019s \u201cBetter, Not Bitter: Living On Purpose in The Pursuit of Racial Justice.\u201d (Photo by Chris Pizzello\/Invision\/AP, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 One of the five teens wrongly imprisoned for the assault on a Central Park jogger has a memoir coming out in the spring.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grand Central Publishing announced Monday that it had acquired Yusef Salaam’s “Better, Not Bitter: Living On Purpose in The Pursuit of Racial Justice.” The publisher is calling the book a “candid and poignant look at the life of an American citizen, born and raised in Harlem, New York who was accused and convicted by a flawed criminal injustice system designed to ensnare and decimate as many Black and Brown bodies as possible.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salaam is one of the so-called Central Park Five, now also known as the Exonerated Five. The five Black and Latino teens were coerced into confessing to a rape they didn’t commit in 1989. All served prison time before being exonerated in 2002. They later received a multimillion-dollar settlement from New York City. Ken Burns made a documentary about them and Ava DuVernay directed a Netflix series.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“One of the most powerful lessons I learned while being wrongfully incarcerated was that instead of going through something, I was going to grow through something,” Salaam said in a statement. “Through ‘Better, Not Bitter,’ I hope to share these lessons with people around the world who \u2013 in these unprecedented times \u2013 are dealing with rage, anger and bitterness directed at a criminal system of injustice that has plagued our country for centuries.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salaam, an activist and motivational speaker, recently published a young adult novel based on his experiences. “Punching the Air,” co-written by Ibi Zoboi, came out in September.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 One of the five teens wrongly imprisoned for the assault on a Central Park jogger has a memoir coming out in the spring. Grand Central Publishing announced Monday that it had acquired Yusef Salaam’s “Better, Not Bitter: Living On Purpose in The Pursuit of Racial Justice.” The publisher is calling the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[694,833,31,1074],"class_list":["post-5888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-books","tag-associated-press","tag-central-park-five","tag-featured","tag-yusef-salaam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}