Juanita E. Mantz - Portrait Of A Deputy Public Defender Book

The chapbook Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or how I became a punk rock lawyer) by Juanita E. Mantz, Esq. is a multi-genre chapbook containing memoir pieces, social justice essays and poetry. It describes the author’s love of punk rock and her quest to challenge the system of mass incarceration as a deputy public defender and the intersection between punk rock and public defense. What do the Talking Heads and the Clash have to do with the Post Conviction Justice Project Clinic at USC? Everything. Music is not just the soundtrack, but indeed the grounding inspiration for Juanita E. Mantz’s depiction of her evolution from punk princess drop-out to deputy public defender in Riverside California. Mantz’s hybrid memoir makes hard left turns and arrives at surprising destinations; after a toxic stop in corporate law (where one white male partner mistakes her for a paralegal), the author returns to California, rejects the big dollars and elects working with poor clients, many of whom