> Skip to content
  • Published: 4 February 2020
  • ISBN: 9781635420036
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $38.00

My Brother Moochie

Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South





A journalist's raw, first-person account of what his family endured after his eldest brother killed a man and was sentenced to life in prison.

A journalist's raw, first-person account of what his family endured after his eldest brother killed a man and was sentenced to life in prison.

At the age of nine, Issac J. Bailey saw his hero, his eldest brother, taken away in handcuffs, not to return from prison for thirty-two years. Bailey tells the story of their relationship and of his experience living in a family suffering guilt and shame. Drawing on sociological research as well as his expertise as a journalist, he seeks to answer the crucial question of why Moochie and many other young black men—including half of the ten boys in his own family—end up in the criminal justice system. What role did poverty, race, and faith play? What effect did living in the South, in the Bible Belt, have? And why is their experience understood as an acceptable trope for black men, while white people who commit crimes are never seen in this generalized way?

My Brother Moochie provides a wide-ranging yet intensely intimate view of crime and incarceration in the United States, and the devastating effects on the incarcerated, their loved ones, their victims, and society as a whole.

  • Published: 4 February 2020
  • ISBN: 9781635420036
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $38.00

Also by Issac J. Bailey

See all

Praise for My Brother Moochie

"With a keen understanding of systemic racism...My Brother Moochie delves into a rarely explored side of the criminal justice system: the families of the perpetrators...powerful." --New York Times Book Review

"Bailey's memoir is a triumph, a painful indictment of American inhumanity woven with threads of grace and love...an extraordinary book about crime, punishment, redemption, and the empowerment that can spring from adversity...nuanced, original, and remarkably clear-sighted." --The Guardian

"An elegant memoir that speaks to the inequities of the criminal justice system and the damage done to family and community when loved ones are locked away...Bailey tells his story with a raw honesty [and] boldly examines the fault lines etched so sharply in our current cultural landscape." --USA Today