A certain kind of release

We live at a time when powerful voices divide reality into good and evil, people into good and bad. The number of people incarcerated in the United States has passed 2 million, largely due to the imposition of mandatory sentencing laws for nonviolent crimes. The rate of incarceration is greater in the United States than in almost any other country in the world. As a consequence, more and more people are falling into the category of “bad.” As sentences lengthen and the “bad” becomes an inherent quality of the prisoner, the idea of hope and change becomes less and less relevant. Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn., have written a book, “Couldn’t Keep It to Myself,” that will challenge this simplistic worldview.

Each chapter is a personal story in which a woman untangles the brambles of her life. Each opens with a photo of the woman as an adult and a photo of her as a child, as if to visually pose the question, “What happened to such innocence and possibility that led to the woman committing a crime?” If the current discourse divides places and people into good and evil as static poles, then the lives and voices of these women defy such a framework. Readers will find themselves able to see prisoners as people not so different from themselves and to shift the angle of vision to see an ever more unharnessable, beautiful and devastating complexity, filled with both uncertainty and promise.

Telling stories is an almost intrinsic form of thought and communication among humans, according to psychologist Jerome Bruner. Narratives are a way individuals make meaning as they construct their life journeys. A story, Bruner says, will almost always be an account of a possible world in which the encountered exception is somehow made sense of. How did one of the writers, Barbara Parsons Lane, make sense of being -- in her words -- “a health worker, business manager, wife, mother, homemaker, gardener and killer”? Lamb, writer of the acclaimed novels “She’s Come Undone” and “I Know This Much Is True,” facilitates a writing workshop with prison writing instructor Dale Griffith, enabling a group of 10 women to tell their own stories, ones that help both themselves and readers make sense of their lives.

In “Hair Chronicles,” Tabatha Rowley traces her life through “pigtails, plaits, fried blond buzzup, a Nubian natural” and long bronze dreadlocks with blond highlights, each style a stage in her journey from ghetto to prison at 23, to change and maturity over a six-year incarceration. She writes with the ease of a storyteller, using dialogue, song and a rhythm befitting the musician she is. Nancy Birkla in “Three Steps Past the Monkey” and Diane Bartholomew in “Snapshots of an Early Life” write narrative chronologies of their lives, using memories turned into dramatic scenes to return to the little girls they were when their problems began. Bonnie Foreshaw in “Faith, Power, and Pants” writes in her Jamaican American vernacular of childhood memories -- of blues and reggae, dumplings and babies dancing, large family gatherings -- and the sadness of an abused child and battered wife who committed a tragic crime for which she grieves. Her voice resonates with empathy as an elder with faith at York, doing 45 to life, the longest held woman prisoner in York’s history.

If there is one pattern and common theme in the 11 stories, it is relationships: of children who were raped or molested by their fathers, uncles or family friends; of mothers who did not know or did not protect them; of women who were violently abused by their husbands. The consequences were addictions, fear, anger, violence and self-destructive behaviors.

There are many prisms through which a life can be viewed. These stories richly communicate diversity of personality, family, race, class and gender issues, as well as addictions and motherhood. Any of these could be a focal point for a life story. Perhaps some day they will. As French philosopher Henri Bergson said, memory is itself a reiterated act of interpretation. But it is neither wrong nor surprising that relationships, particularly ones gone bad, are at the center of the stories. The statistics of women in prison who were abused as children or adults is staggering.

Finding one’s voice is a primary part of any writing project. For the women who are the authors of “Couldn’t Keep It to Myself,” their voices were taken from them long before they came to prison, often in a situation of terror. Carolyn Adams writes in “Thefts” about being raped and impregnated by her father at 11, sent away to have the baby and told not to tell anyone. Eight of the contributors were battered, and nine were sexually abused.

The power of the writing workshop and the triumph of the women was in developing their voices, with humor, with pathos, and never asking for pity. Many pieces are superbly written; some are less polished, yet they carry each other because there is a collective power that becomes a voice for women in prison, much needed when women are only 4% of all prisoners in the United States.

The central energy in the book is the transformative power of writing. The women developed complexity as their lens through the writing process. In Lamb’s moving introduction, he speaks about the many drafts, the changes in language and in the story told, and the sharing with peers. Brenda Medina, arrested at 17, writes in the voice of a child of her need for and fear of her mother, who was mentally ill. She sees herself as a teenager holding on to the security of a boyfriend, drifting into his gang and the tragedy of her choices. Now, supported by the unconditional love of both her parents, she is serving 25 years without parole; she writes, “Hope and despair live side by side at York Prison. Goodness and evil live here too.”

As each woman looks back at her life, she finds ways to understand the whys, yet knows causality is not simple or automatic; she should have made other choices. Nothing can ever restore the lives that were lost or the suffering of the victims’ families. For those with shorter sentences and nonviolent crimes, the weight of the past is lighter, but the self-examination no less profound. There is deep remorse and haunting regret that comes with understanding and acceptance. There is wisdom that is palpable because of how directly they have faced their lives. A reader might wonder if she or he could or would want to look as deeply inside oneself.

Criminal justice policy is not the focus of the book, yet it is central to its meaning. Griffith, in a concluding chapter, broad in scope and wise, describes a shift in York away from rehabilitation and towards punishment, a national phenomenon. In this context, two women committed suicide and several others attempted. There was an “epidemic of angry defeat” among the women; despair reigned. The York School staff reached out to the community for volunteers to create programs to help overcome the hopelessness among the women. It was then that Lamb began the writing workshop that led to “Couldn’t Keep It To Myself.” Griffith refers to the shift in national policy in the 1990s that resulted in mandatory drug sentencing laws and a skyrocketing in the numbers of women being incarcerated for non-violent crimes -- the population of women in prison is increasing at nearly double the rate of men; sentences have increased in length and early parole release rates are declining. Lamb makes clear the severity of life in prison. When you read the women’s words, you will feel it.

As you come to know each writer, your mind will begin to ask questions about social policy. Why are these women in prison for sentences as long as 20, 25 and 45 years? Or why are prisons the place for people suffering from substance abuse and mental illness? Perhaps startling information will come into your life, such as the fact that nationwide 50% of all current U.S. prisoners are African American, and there are five times as many African-American men in prison as in all four year colleges and universities. You may ask, as does Lamb in his introduction, “As a nation we called these prisons into existence. Are these the prisons we need?”

One truth this book affirms is the capacity for people to change. The writers of “Couldn’t Keep It to Myself” chart their own journeys of growth, navigating the terrain of their internal worlds, their pasts and present prison realities. Who they have become is clear both in self-awareness and what they do with their lives -- teaching others, advocacy, computer work, construction in prison and out. It is in this change that hope resides; lying next to and rising out of despair, hope permeates the book. Why, in the end, does Lamb want us to care about 10 women in prison? Perhaps because in noticing the humanity of others, we become more human ourselves.

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From Couldn’t Keep It to Myself

In therapy, I’m asked if my husband’s talk of killing me made me afraid.

“No,” I answer firmly.

Did his threats impair my ability to function in daily life?

“No. I functioned fine.”

But had I? How could I not have been afraid? Why do I feel safer here in prison than I felt at home? ...

I can’t remember shooting Mark but can still see the look of hatred on his face the moment before. That look haunts me. The flashbacks make me feel as if my nerves are exposed, as if electricity is crackling along the surface of my skin.

-- Barbara Parsons Lane