A Beautiful Pain by Damon Venable

The myth of Black boys being inherently irredeemable is a historical fact and still reifies in the practices and outcomes within American criminal legal systems without compunction or abatement. Black Boys are fixed as something unchildlike, and their humanity is disregarded when encountering the American criminal legal system. Since the days of Richard Wright’s youth, as he recounts, “The white South said it knew ‘niggers,’ and I was what the white South called a ‘nigger.’ Well, the white South had never known me—never known what I thought, what I felt.”

A Beautiful Pain is the story of one Black boy’s misguided quest for identity and belonging while navigating through atypical childhood adversities, i.e., poverty, physical and gun violence, social decay and rampant drug use, racially disparate and aggressive policing, and other forms of institutional neglect in the 1980s. At sixteen, Damon Venable, when encountering the New Jersey criminal legal system, which cared less about what he thought and felt or what made him into a violent juvenile offender, was sentenced to fifty years to life in prison.

This book is a coming-of-age story about hope, struggle, and willpower in the face of sheer hopelessness and inhumane suffering inside the carceral spaces of America. It is a story highlighting the power of choice and reclaiming one’s dignity and agency despite the stigma and treatment of being irredeemable; and, how one’s mindset can be re-tuned to shape a positive life trajectory.

Damon D. Venable is a graduate of Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice and has a Finance degree and a NJ State Certificate in Paralegal Studies, with over twenty-five years of paralegal experience. He is a Community Advocate and currently works as a Paralegal, where he assists in the preparation of resentencing hearings for children who were tried as adults and youthful offenders under twenty-six years old, and coordinates with community members to develop defense strategies to secure favorable outcomes for these children and young individuals. He is a Re-entry Preparation Consultant, Peer-to-Peer Mentor, and Professional Development Coach. After being arrested at age sixteen for serious first-degree offenses, on May 4th, 2021, Damon was released on his earliest parole eligibility after serving thirty-five years of his life sentence. He remains a staunch proponent of the Restorative Justice model and endeavors to transform the Criminal Justice System from a structure that treats people of color unfairly.