Writing for Better Prison Conditions in Uganda: Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses from My Mouth (2020)

In this article, I argue that prison authorities need to listen to former prisoners’ testimonies to glean some insights on how to improve life in prison. One such testimony, in Uganda’s case, is that of Dr Stella Nyanzi, whose collection of poems, No Roses from My Mouth (2020), was written and published while she was incarcerated at Luzira Women’s Prison in Kampala. I argue that by reading the poems about prison life in this collection, prison authorities can take note of the welfare-related issues that Nyanzi raises, which point to the loopholes or limitations they need to fix in the administration of prisons in order to make the lives of prisoners more comfortable and less stressful.