I received an e-mail from a young woman based on Monday’s blog post about hip hop’s “stand by your man” in prison problem. In that post, I highlighted a number of past videos and songs to buttress my argument about the cultural expectations that are being placed on young women of color to wait out the incarceration of their partners.

I asked the young woman who sent this to me for permission to share a part of her e-mail here and she agreed:

“I wanted to let you know that I live that life that you wrote about. My boyfriend is locked up serving a fifteen year sentence in prison. We have a baby together and I am 21. Everyone expects me to just wait for him to get out. I do love him but I also feel that he made a mistake and now I have to do his time too…I am at community college now and I am trying to make a better life. I just found your website because I was writing a paper about prison life for a sociology class this summer and now I read it all of the time. I just wanted to send you this e-mail because I don’t think that everyone should expect young girls to just have to wait for their men to get out of prison and for us not to live our own life too. It’s hard and not easy.”

The young woman also suggested another video to me that addresses the issue of the young women left behind in this epidemic of incarceration of men of color. She said that it was very popular among her peers. I am including it here. It is by a group called Aventura and the song is called “El Malo.”

Here are the first couple of stanzas of the song translated from Spanish to English:

The Bad One

He gives you his love
You sleep with doubts
Now you see that routine
Is not what it appeared to be
He’s sincere, contrary
To my defects but I’m still
The bad one that you can’t stop loving

You might be the cinderella
In the fairy tale that gives pity
And even if i’m not a prince charming
I’m your love and your dilemma
And just like in the novels
I’m the bad boy with a virtue