A Very Prison Thanksgiving: Inmates Share Holiday Traditions

Thanksgiving in prison is a plate full of mixed emotions. On one hand, there’s excitement with the special holiday meal (often including real turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie). It’s a time for cellmates and friends to get together and create something unique and delcious, like Jovan Stewart’s Famous Banana Pudding, Rachell House’s Enchilada Bowls, or Angelina Omara’s Vanilla Pancakes. But the Holiday also serves as a painful reminder of what these individuals don’t have — the chance to be surrounded (at least physically) by family and friends. The chance to be around kids, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and childhood friends. The chance to share a meal with the people that mean the most to them. If they’re lucky, they might get a phone call or a card or an email on their tablet as a reminder they haven’t been forgotten. In this episode, we speak with some of the hundreds of inmates who called in to share their Thanksgiving stories, traditions, favorite foods, and who or what they’re thankful for. It’s an honest, raw, touching, heartwarming, sad, and sometimes humorous depiction of what Thanksgiving really means to someone incarcerated.