Overview

A provocative drawing of Venezuela's Lady Justice replaced Abe Lincoln's words on the lawyer's room of Reten La Planta, a prison in Caracas. The time was 1995, Gail Kenna's last day in country after four years there. Her non-fiction work, initially printed through a 2000 Puffin Foundation grant, explores a country that satirizes greed and depravity, and mocks unequal administration of the law. In prologue and epilogue, and fourteen interrelated stories, Kenna unveils corruption that helps to explain Venezuela's tragic economic and political morass today. In the foreword to this reissued book, Kenna asks how Lady Justice should be depicted in the USA today, and if Venezuelan corruption has something to teach us.

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9781734160239

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Reviews

The Puffin Foundation is honored to have been part of your fascinating and sad expose on Venezuelan prisons. (Gladys Miller-Rosenstein) Your descriptions in Beyond the Wall are accurate, scary, harrowing, and moving. It's an incredible, fascinating, and well-told story. (Richard D. Atkins, attorney at law, International Recoveries) Congratulations on Beyond the Wall...an important addition to the drug policy reform Movement. (Ethan Nadelmann, The Lindesmith Center) Beyond the Wall totally absorbed me. Your stories captured the feel of how bizarre and hard it is in Venezuela. (Elisabeth Friedman, Fulbright Scholar to Venezuela, Stanford University) Thank you so much for Beyond the Wall. The stories in it are both touching and horrifying, and I hope your book finds a wide audience. (Francis Fukuyama, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason U.) This book displays a real flair for dialogue and deadly serious but wonderfully witty story telling. I found the book filled with insights and independent thinking, something that is too hard to find among vote-getting politicians... (William Ratliff, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institute) Thank you for your educational, provocative, and intriguing book. (Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS) Foreign Service Journal review: Focus on Books, Beyond the Wall This is an unusual book, one that trades polished packaging for the unvarnished truth of experience, and the power to reminds folks of what it means to be human and raise a few important, if disconcerting, policy issues to boot. Thanks for being the passionate and persevering person you have become. Such deeds of mercy, of loving kindness in Beyond the Wall. There is so much the rest of us can learn from your life's example. (Dr. Robert Coles, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University Medical School)

The Puffin Foundation is honored to have been part of your fascinating and sad expose on Venezuelan prisons. (Gladys Miller-Rosenstein) Your descriptions in Beyond the Wall are accurate, scary, harrowing, and moving. It's an incredible, fascinating, and well-told story. (Richard D. Atkins, attorney at law, International Recoveries) Congratulations on Beyond the Wall...an important addition to the drug policy reform Movement. (Ethan Nadelmann, The Lindesmith Center) Beyond the Wall totally absorbed me. Your stories captured the feel of how bizarre and hard it is in Venezuela. (Elisabeth Friedman, Fulbright Scholar to Venezuela, Stanford University) Thank you so much for Beyond the Wall. The stories in it are both touching and horrifying, and I hope your book finds a wide audience. (Francis Fukuyama, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason U.) This book displays a real flair for dialogue and deadly serious but wonderfully witty story telling. I found the book filled with insights and independent thinking, something that is too hard to find among vote-getting politicians... (William Ratliff, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institute) Thank you for your educational, provocative, and intriguing book. (Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS) Foreign Service Journal review: Focus on Books, Beyond the Wall This is an unusual book, one that trades polished packaging for the unvarnished truth of experience, and the power to reminds folks of what it means to be human and raise a few important, if disconcerting, policy issues to boot. Thanks for being the passionate and persevering person you have become. Such deeds of mercy, of loving kindness in Beyond the Wall. There is so much the rest of us can learn from your life's example. (Dr. Robert Coles, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University Medical School)

Author Information

Gail Wilson Kenna, a college professor, taught in Germany, Malaysia, Venezuela, Colombia, and throughout the USA. As the author of four books, her many writing awards include the Donald Axinn fiction award to the Bread Loaf writers' conference. Gail has served as the Creative Nonfiction judge for the Soul-Making Keats literary awards in San Francisco since 2017. Besides teaching the past fifteen years for a Virginia community college, her new LLC, Crosshill Creek Publications, offers editing and instruction services. An active alum of University of Southern California, she earned her M.A. through a European program in 1982, and later took summer writing courses at Oxford University. The spouse of a retired Air Force officer, Gail and her husband reside on a creek of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay.

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