“Book Stew” – Episode 22 from Wilmington TV on Vimeo.
Thanks to Eileen MacDougall, the creator and host of “Book Stew,” the WCTV monthly book blast for readers and writers. I talk here about Shakespeare Behind Bars and the prison system today.
Category Archives: Prison & the arts
Dying While Black and Brown
Antoine Hunter (below), Travis Santell Rowland, Rashad Pridgen, and Matthew Wickett (above, left to right)
A dance performance at Harvard Law School on Friday showed that art is one of our most powerful ways to fight for justice. See my new post online about the Zaccho Dance Troupe and their spectacular Dying While Black and Brown at
Reading Groups in Prison
I’m excited that West Virginia University is starting a book group that seems based, in part on Changing Lives Through Literature. I have written about CLTL here and there’s info on my blog about it as well. When I went to a conference last year in West Virginia, I talked about CLTL and lo and behold, I think it helped Katy Ryan get this group going, although she had been doing great things already with literature and writing behind bars.
This is a press release from WVA. I forgive them the use of the word, “inmate.” For more info, contact: Devon Copeland, Devon.Copeland@mail.wvu.edu _______________________________________________________________
For the past 10 years, community and West Virginia University nonprofit organization the Appalachian Prison Book Project has helped imprisoned people discover the transformative power of reading.
The project began in 2004 after Katy Ryan, associate professor of English at WVU, realized the state did not have any prison book projects.
The group has received more than 20,000 letters from imprisoned people expressing how needed — and essential — reading is. Books have been shipped to men and women in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Now, the program is starting its next chapter – a prison book club in the secure female facility at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
The idea for the book club grew from a discussion at last spring’s Educational Justice and Appalachian Prisons Symposium, an event co-sponsored by the Appalachian Prison Book Project. Longtime members of the project Cari Carpenter, Elizabeth Juckett and Katy Ryan are facilitating the book club.
“Prisons are built to isolate and to separate. They stand as formidable barriers between those inside and those outside. Books can lessen that isolation,” said Ryan, founder of the Appalachian Prison Book Project. “Malcolm X wrote that reading in prison changed forever the course of his life. ‘It awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.’ We all need that intellectual and creative stimulation, and people in prison have fewer opportunities for it.”
Through reading and discussion of selected works, the group hopes to strengthen members’ analytical and communication skills, and build positive peer support and vital connections between people inside and outside prisons.
It can also foster relationships and help mend those affected by incarceration.
“One woman told us that after reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, she wanted to reach out to her son. He is going through a hard time, and she hadn’t been able to find a way to connect with him. She had not felt comfortable writing to him, but the book helped her find a way to start,” Ryan said. “She wrote her son a letter. Then they talked on the phone for the first time in seven months.
For others, it can simply be a more personal feeling.
“Several (prisoners) have talked about how a book has stayed with them and given them a new perspective or strength,” Ryan said. “The importance of reading and access to an education while inside prison certainly extends to life outside prison. Studies repeatedly conclude that those with a higher education do better once released than those without. But learning also matters while people are still in prison. Their lives, their health, their relationships, their mental faculties are not on hold. Books—and especially being able to talk with others about books—can be a real resource for living, for figuring things out.”
Every other week the book club works on creative writing. The 14-member group writes short essays and poems, reading them to one another.
“We want the book club to be flexible and responsive to the needs and ideas of participants,” Ryan said. “The women are highly motivated and dedicated to their education and growth. It’s a phenomenal group.”
Though it always accepts donations for postage, supplies and other books (including dictionaries), the group is currently seeking donations of the following titles for the book club. All donated items must be paperback.
There Are No Children Here, by Alex Koltowitz
A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gaines
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Discussions in the club have been fantastic and reaction to the group has been positive, Ryan said.
“Staff members (at the prison) have reached out to let me know that the women are really excited about the program and are talking about the books as they are reading them. And we know that other women are already interested in joining the next group. There is a lot of momentum.
The group says studies show rates of repeat offenses drop when inmates are given access to such materials while inside. The power of the written word, Ryan said, has the ability to change and transform.
“We often describe books as an ‘escape’ or ‘transporting’ — they move us — and yet they return us to ourselves and our moment,” she said. “The right book at the right time can adjust, even alter, the way that we think about life and the world.”
#ejpsymposium Day 2
Day 2 of the Education Justice Project symposium began with a session on the Politics & Ethics of Higher Education in Prison. The moderator of the panel was Earl Walker, an alum of EJP, and he said that higher education in prison truly is “the new civil rights movement.”
Erin Castro, up first, talked about working with scholars on the inside (pictured above with her students on the screen) and said that she presents her scholarship at national conferences and has a manuscript under review, an ms. completed with those same students. Nationally, she noted, we are not so advanced and said that only 6% of such potential scholars have access to post secondary education. But the surprise is, such education not only reduces recidivism, it is transformative education, per Paulo Freire. We cannot leave out the voices of the people inside.
After Erin, Ed Wiltse asked if prison education can return the university to core values? He said that from teaching behind bars with a mix of university and incarcerated students, the lessons he’s learned include: 1) who’s classroom, our classroom; 2) voice and authority means everyone’s 3) who’s text, our text. He then turned to Dewey: The community’s purpose is to educate and move forward.
James Kilgore (pictured above on the left) said his commitment to mass incarceration comes from his heart, and from being incarcerated as well as an educator. So when he began to cry, he moved us all. Then Wham: “I was an educator before I went to prison.” When he was in prison he wanted to teach other prisoners but the person who ran education in prison said only if you sit people in their race groups. He refused – this was a man who had been to South Africa and fought against Apartheid– so he said to that teacher, “I will get them to agree.” And the men did. From this and from his own amazing experience with EJP, he concluded: the movement of the oppressed must be lead by these who are oppressed.
Carl Walker said in some ways he felt incarcerated in higher education with a program called “college to careers.” An audience member responded to the racial segregation so enforced in prison by saying that educators need to turn to their students inside because, “We know how to navigate that space.”
In a session on peer instruction in the prison classroom, professor Jennifer Drew, mentioned that a Spanish language instruction program at BU was begun by Jose Duval, formerly incarcerated student, who spoke by phone at the conference from the Dominican Republic. One of the difficulties of being a peer tutor in the prison classroom is not being seen as a cop. But knowing the subject , he said, was not always as difficult as knowing how to convey the message. Then, Jennifer Drew, who used to run BU higher ed, was supposed to be the prof but she had students teach Spanish because they knew the language. An interesting moment for Jose was when some of the guys wanted him to tell them some of the answers on the test. But they eventually, were able to see that the tutors were serious.
Augie who was a peer instructor in an EJP carceral setting and was in an ESL program called Language Partners, said it was initiated by a person behind bars. He felt that there was stress on his “free partners” who had to find online resources for them, because as peer teachers inside, they were not allowed resources available on the outside. He read a paper by Elfuego Nunez who teaches, i.e. is a peer tutor, on the inside. Nunez said that he had a lot of desire to help men speak English because they wanted the power to talk to their doctors, read to their kids, and learn. For him, teaching was a honor, and while the work was voluntary and not eligible for good time, it was worth it.
The last session of the day that I went to was on Literature, and it included Sarah Higinbottom and Bill Taft from the Common Good program in Atlanta. Discussions of students gaining from making their own books, engaging in challenges such as Milton and Shakespeare are up my alley. I talked about the work I did at Framingham Women’s Prison, directing plays, showed a clip of Merchant of Venice and then poured my heart out about Changing Lives Through Literature. What a day.
Now For Some Good News: The Justice Theatre Company
A newly formed theatre group has their focus on justice and an upcoming show about prison should be on your agenda. The Justice Theatre Company, founded this year, aims to tackle serious issues such as “poverty, human trafficking, racism, or genocide,” through the stage. They are a group of theatre aficionados between the ages of 14 and 24 who aim to expose social injustice as a way to raise awareness their website says they always will “advocate for the dignity of all, as well as raise proceeds for an organization that helps to end these injustices.”
Their first production will be an adaptation of Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison—wait for it—my book (SBB)! On Friday, August 15, they debut, and performances continue on Saturday, August 16 (see above). Their Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/justicetheatre has lots of photos of the company and shows are being held at Fontbonne Academy 930 Brook Road, Milton, MA 02186.
It is the first time SBB has been put on stage and I am very excited that these energetic young adults are so enthusiastic. I attended a rehearsal and they couldn’t be more professional and committed to their work. So it will be wonderful to see the finished product. They are donating all proceeds (admission is $7 or a “gently-used book”) to the Quincy Prison Book Project. Couldn’t be better in my opinion. We will be on hand for audience discussion after the show on Friday night (me) and on Saturday afternoon (a panel including the Quincy folks, a yet unnamed judge and myself). My books will be on sale at a reduced price for audience members and signed of course.
Adapted from my book, they call their play, “the thrilling tale that follows a teacher, her eight students, and their journey through life, literature, and lock-up…Jean, an idealistic teacher with a desire to change her world, comes to teach in Framingham Women’s Prison in the Fall of 1988. There, she meets Dolly, a determined prisoner serving a life sentence for her boyfriend’s murder; Bertie, a Jamaican woman who is outcast because of her horrendous crime; Rhonda, the daughter of a Marine who falls into crime in the wake of her father’s death; Kit, a former drug user who can hardly keep clean, even behind bars; Rose, an HIV+ drug addict and former prostitute who is rejected by almost every inmate because of her status during the AIDS epidemic; Cody, a troubled heroin addict and dealer, who is more concerned with love than literature; and Mamie, an arsonist who fights to finish a college class before she succumbs to the brain tumor that plagues her.
The unlikeliest of plays in the loneliest of places: how will these eight women ever come together to produce Shakespeare?”
So, meanwhile what could be more fun for me than this? I hope to see you at a show! And hats off to the newly formed Justice Theatre Company
. You probably won’t have any trouble knowing which one of the above is me.