How do you hold on to hope after more than twenty years of imprisonment For Alice Johnson, the answer lies with God.For her whole life Alice Johnson had been an up-standing citizen, but in 1992, after an emotionally and financially tumultuous period left her with few options, she turned to crime as a way to pay off her mounting debts. Convicted in 1996 for her nonviolent involvement in a Memphis cocaine trafficking organization, she received life in prison under the mandatory sentencing laws of the time. Twenty years later, a video of Alice telling her story from prison went viral, and she found celebrity recognition, most notably from Kim Kardashian West, whose activism on Alice's behalf led President Trump to commute her sentence in 2018.In this inspiring memoir of faith, Alice recounts the story of her journey to forgiveness, detailing how she held on to her own hope while giving hope to others during her two decades of incarceration. From becoming an ordained minister to mentoring her fellow prisoners to writing plays, she reveals how Christianity and an unshakable belief in God helped her persevere, using her time behind bars to make the prison around her a better place for others. Offering an intimate portrait of America's crisis of mass incarceration, Alice links social activism to her spiritual faith, and in the process makes a persuasive and poignant argument for the importance of achieving a justice that transcends politics.Featuring sixteen pages of intimate, personal color photographs, After Life is a dramatic story of hope, mercy, and gratitude, a portrait that shows the realities of life behind bars and the importance of the ongoing struggle to end mass incarceration. A beacon of light in the darkness of despair, After Life serves as both a vital reminder of the power of redemption and of the importance of making second chances count.
