![Lisa Forbes Portrait](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/47459ba/2147483647/strip/true/crop/268x350+0+0/resize/880x1149!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fee%2Fba%2F53dc75664e08833112766b5749a2%2Flisa-forbes.jpeg)
On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. presents his second, and final, discussion with Lisa Forbes, author of ‘I Can Take It From Here: A Memoir of Trauma, Prison, and Self-Empowerment.’
As the youngest of six children, Forbes grew up in a Chicago housing project where she endured sexual, religious, and emotional abuse as a young girl. A voracious reader, she graduated high school at 15 and went to work as a secretary in a downtown insurance office, she became pregnant at 16 and, at 19, unexpectedly and uncharacteristically committed a violent act, stabbing and killing the father of her daughter.
Forbes talks about the ongoing epidemic of mass re-incarceration, starting her own company, Lisa Forbes Inc.; post-prison life and the importance of second-chances.