Writer's in Prison

I was doing a guest writing workshop at Susanville State Prison near the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. Most of the men doing time there are sentenced to prison because of drugs. They are housed in huge dormitories in bunk beds. They have no privacy, no place to be alone, no place to think quietly. I had great apprehensions when I walked onto the prison grounds. I had taught writing workshops at many California prisons, but those prisons had cells. In Cells, even if they are shared with another inmate, one can find a least a little writing time. Surely the men here at Susanville were not going to be interested in what I had to offer.

I had decided to spend my two days giving a monologue workshop. I wanted the men to have a chance to write and then perform before a camera. I wanted them to see themselves on video before I left the prison at the end of the second day. I felt that life in this prison had probably stripped them of most of their identity and that writing and performance art might restore some sense of who they were or who they could be.

I was pleased that twenty men had signed up for the class. This was the maximum number I had said I could take. I spend the first hour with them, talking about what it was like to be a writer. Telling them that there is a joy and a freedom in the words. That no matter how much they were all forced to be alike, dress alike, eat the same food, keep the same hours, that in their writing they could finally be different. As different as they wanted to be. Writing, I told them, can be the most liberating of all the arts. You can be free with the word. There are no limits. told them that every time I picked up a pencil or sat down at a computer or a typewriter that it was as if I was coming home, coming home to my art, my words, that this was a world that no one else could take away. This art would sustain me throughout all my days.

The men listened well and when I finally had them start their writing projects, they worked hard. There was only one, a young, very handsome blond man, who I worried about. He was reluctant to share during that first day when I had them writing their monologues. Every other student read and rewrote and read again, but this man sat quietly, erasing, writing, tearing up drafts, starting again. Whenever I would approach his desk, he quietly covered his paper with his arms.

“Can I see?” I ask.

“It would be easier for me if you didn’t,” he would answer then a shy smile would appear.

I figured, what the heck. Even if he doesn’t share his writing with the class, he’s writing. He is choosing to spend his whole day in this hot stuffy classroom working on something called monologue. That morning he probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. This should make me happy. But it didn’t. I was concerned about his need for privacy, about his inability to share, knowing that he didn’t think his writing was good enough.

I had worked in prisons for too many years to be fooled by his shyness. I knew that many of the inmates had learned at a very young age that they could do nothing right. They had been abused and tormented as children and lacked any self-confidence. But no matter how much I praised the other prisoners he wouldn’t relent. He went back to his dormitory that evening with his writing tucked into his jeans pocket. Many of the other men just left their work on the desks. Not him. He was taking no chance that I would read it after he was locked away behind the bars. He was right, of course. 1 would have made a beeline right for his desk the minute he got out the door. He had judged me right.

The second day all the men returned to the classroom. This was particularly pleasing to me. Even the young blond man. This was the day for reading and taping. I wondered how the silent, shy student would handle this. I was actually surprised to see him there. He had combed his long, blond hair and his shirt was neatly pressed. He had obviously thought about the fact that he was going to be filmed and wanted to look his best. At last I was going to hear what he wrote.

He didn’t say much during the performances. I had given the men fairly loose instructions about who should be speaking in their monologues. I had, though, told them that I wanted to hear their characters tell me what it is they really wanted, what it was that no one understood about them, and why they needed to talk. He sat there quietly, watching the work of his fellow inmates. One of the men had written a monologue for God, and another had been Abraham Lincoln, another Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of the monologues were funny, others serious. Even though they hadn’t had time to memorize their lines, once they began reading, the scripts in their hands were hardly noticeable, and I was extremely moved by their work.

Finally, he was the only one who hadn’t read his monologue. When all the others were finished I asked him, “Are you ready now?”

“I don’t think so,” he answered in such a gentle voice. Then the men were on him.

“Man, if I can do it, you can do it. Try it. You’ll like it. Come on man, don’t be shy. Nobody’s going to judge you here.”

So he got up, took his script to the performance area and stood before the camera. He looked so young. The papers in his hands were shaking like frightened birds, but he looked with determination into the eye of the camera and opened up his monologue.

“My name is Bruce. I am twenty-one years old and I am dead. I am dead because I spent time in prison for drugs and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about me. I went to bed every night just counting the days ‘till I could get out and get that next fix. I would kill for my next fix. I would kill for my next fix.”

He went on about his life, how he was raised in poverty by alcoholic parents, beaten, hungry, no life at all, shuffled back and forth through foster homes. While he read, he showed scars on his body, the burn marks on his arms where a drunken father had extinguished cigarettes, the cuts on his wrists where he had tried to take his own life. I couldn’t help it. The tears began forming in my eyes, hot and painful. My God, why had I asked him to share this horrible pain? Then he got to the end of his story.

“Even though I died right there in prison, I want to tell you something. The reason I need to talk to you today. I have risen again, just like in the Bible. I am reborn. One day a woman came in and told me to write. And I had never written before, but I did it anyway. I sat for eight ours in a chair and focused the way I have never focused before. I could never even sit still before! I wrote out my ugly life, and then I was able to finally feel something. To feel pity. For myself. When no one else was ever able to feel it. And I felt something else. I felt joy. I was writing, and what I was writing was good. I was a writer! And I was going to get up in front of all those men in that class, and I would say that this . . .” At these words he held up his little manuscript. This is more important to me than any drug. What I wanted to tell you was that I died a drug addict, and I was reborn as a writer.”

We all sat there stunned. The camera kept running. He took a self-conscious little bow. Then he said, “Thank you,” once again in his quiet voice. And then the men broke out in spontaneous applause. He walked over to me and took my hands. Inmates are not allowed to touch their teachers, but I let him anyway. “You have given me something,” he said, “that no drug has ever given me. My self-respect.”

I think of him often. I pray that he has continued to find respect for himself through the written word. I know, though, that that day in that room with those men, a writer was born. After a long and terrible journey, a lost soul had come home, home to the words.