Coal Hill Review

by Ella Stone

We make lists to organize our lives. Lists of food. Of errands. Of goals. “To Do.” They’re concrete things that measure our productivity, our ambition, sometimes even our feelings. This week for class, we focused on list making. The men had some experience making lists during our first class when they made lists of things that are yellow, verbs that start with “c”, and breakfast foods.

This week, however, the lists dug deeper. A guest lecturer came to class to lead a discussion on lists, and the power they have in writing. Their hidden meanings. Their unveiling significance. She read some examples of list writing from Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” and Jim Harrison’s “I Believe” and Nick Flynn’s “Same Again.” I watched the men begin to understand the power of lists, watched them intrigued by their puzzle-like quality, their randomness and yet thoughtful construction.

I made a list of my own as I sat there in the classroom: a circle of red shirts, a ring of brains, hearts that pump, beating vessels, heating chairs, feeling, listening, learning, wanting, writing, changing.

I ran into an old friend last weekend. He’s a sheriff at a county jail outside of Pittsburgh. Although a bit taken back that I was teaching creative writing at a jail, he still believes that I’m improving their lives while they’re behind bars. Giving them something positive to meditate on, providing an outlet that encourages growth and supports creativity. But he’s been exposed to the county jail system for years, and he knows that the majority of inmates who end up in jail return soon after they’re set free.

“You might change one, one out of a hundred, maybe,” he said taking a sip of his beer. I looked behind him, past the pool tables and neon beer signs, taking in the cliché-ness of his statement. I’ve heard it before. While working with inner city elementary school kids a few summers ago, I heard the same “You might change one life.” And all over again, I find myself asking “Is it worth it?”

I don’t think it’s about changing one life. I don’t think it’s about helping someone take a 180-degree turn. It’s more complicated than that. Especially with a group of adults who have made decisions that have put them behind bars, or who have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what makes this time so interesting, so crucial and so significant is that most of these inmates have no idea what their near futures hold. An uncertainty permeates the walls through which they walk, day in and day out. Most of them haven’t had a trial yet, haven’t been sentenced or acquitted. They’re kind of in limbo, in purgatory. Waiting.

Watching. Respecting. Reading. Reflecting. Regretting.
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by Ella Stone

A colorful baby boy’s room. A quiet fishing lake. A tight-knit urban neighborhood. A woman’s steady arms. A lively street in NYC.

These are the places where the inmates of ACJ want to be. Places they want to remember, places they choose to re-create. As each man reads his piece to the class, I start wondering if they’ve ever shared these places with anyone else, if they’ve ever let anyone into this positive space in their heads. Does the judge in their trial see these places in their eyes? Do the security guards feel them when they walk down the hall? Are they even the places each inmate sees when he looks into the mirror?

This week our lesson plan focuses on sense of place. I want the students to really think about their surroundings, to see the power that place can have in writing. We talk about sense of place, and about how to evoke different landscapes and environments. Minds wander to hometowns and vacation spots, to summer nights in the streets, to where water meets land, and land meets mountain.

I know very little about each inmate—where they’re from, what place they grew up in, where they spend their summers—and I have assumptions going into this lesson. I choose to read excerpts from writers Janisse Ray and Nick Flynn. Ray’s excerpt exemplifies her complex and lyrical language, her intimacy with writing about the natural world, descriptions of large lands and forests. Flynn’s excerpt displays his solid, rhythmic writing that evokes the nitty-gritty of Boston streets and homeless shelters. Both excellent. Both different. Both good examples of creating a sense of place. But all along I think they’ll respond most to Flynn.

The men each read a paragraph of Ray, slowing down their pace to grasp her language, trying hard to convey her voice. They tell me afterwards that it was difficult to read, and in some places hard to follow, but they want to talk more about her words, her syntax, her creative voice. Then we read Flynn. His writing is easier to read out loud and easier to follow the first time through. And although they really like him, they want to read more Ray. About the Georgian land, the junkyard she grew up in, the wide, open sky full of deep blues and stars. I see them challenged by her language, see them thrive off her choice of word structure and punctuation, see them find solace in descriptions of vast land and empty forests, skies that stretch forever.

Once I really think about it, it seems obvious that they might respond to nature writing like Ray’s. Day in and day out, they sit in small cells, surrounded by painted concrete and dirty bathrooms, constant chatter and unattractive light. Ray’s words take them outside of the jail, to see and feel an openness and freedom, a way of life without boundaries. But what really intrigues them is that it is a place of unfamiliarity. And just as they, pleasantly surprised, find something special in a world of unfamiliarity, I realize that so have I.

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by Ella Stone

I taught my first creative writing class at the ACJ (Allegheny County Jail) this week. I thought I’d be nervous but the moment the fifteen male inmates walk into the room and sit in a circle, I feel calm, comfortable, eager. I suppose that’s how a teacher should feel approaching his/her first class. The inmates seem excited to be here, looking forward to something new, something different, interested to hear what I have to say.

A range of inmates participate. Through introductions, I learn that a few are writing 400-pg novels, some have never written before in their lives, and others just want to do something that might better who they are. I think they deserve a second chance.

I’ve been worried about teaching in a jail, worried that I might label these individuals, whether subconsciously or not, now that they’re locked up. I’ve worried that I might filter too much of how I act or what I say because these students have made mistakes, decisions that have led them behind bars. I fear that all these worries might uncover a truth about myself that I don’t want to see, the truth that as much as I try not to judge, I do.

We free-write towards the end of class. They each choose a prompt and we write for thirty minutes, teacher included. For a moment while I’m writing, I forget where I am. I feel a circle of writers around me, an energy that feeds the room, a creativity that travels from head to head as we sit in silence, crafting. I look up to think of a word, scan the short haircuts of still men around me, and forget I’m in a jail. I don’t notice the red of their inmate suits; I just see their pencils moving.

For a few of the students, this is their first time attending a class at the jail, and for one it’s his first time in a writing class. After the free-write, he shares his work. He wrote about how he was born into a single-parent household with a mother addicted to crack, how difficult it was to fight his circumstances, how it seemed inevitable that he would get into drugs, start using, start selling. He holds the face of a sincere child when he reads, the voice of a friendly neighbor and he listens intently when other people speak, nodding his head slightly, absorbing the words like dry wood in a needed rain.

A second chance. I re-think what I mean by second chance. Based on my first three hours with these inmates, and my first writing lesson with them, I start to believe that they never really had a first chance. I don’t know all their stories yet. I’m sure I’ll find out more through their writing. But this new student, who was so eager to share his first piece of writing, represents the whole room for me. He was born into circumstances out of his control, and so what if he wasn’t able to overcome them and turn everything he knew into good? What if he’s not looking for a second, third, fourth chance at life? What if he’s searching for the first one he never had?
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by Ella Stone 

“I share a cell with another guy. It’s more like a bathroom. There’s a sink and a toilet, and where a bathtub would normally be is our bed. It’s horrible,” one of the inmates says.

“Gosh” I say, eyes wide, trying to imagine living in such a small space.

Big things come in small packages.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.

This week we open class with a video about a British artist who sculpts miniscule figurines. He constructs them through a magnifying class, balances their grain of salt-sized body parts on an eyelash or in the eye of a needle. He re-creates all sorts of characters from the Incredible Hulk to the Last Supper scene to the Wizard of Oz cast. I can’t fathom the hand-eye coordination needed to build these figurines, the patience, the self-discipline. The artist’s name is Wigan, and his inspiration comes from a discouraging childhood of dyslexia when teachers told him he would never amount to anything big. And he agreed, in a way. He listened to their words, to their put-downs, and decided to build something bigger. He discovered good in a world of minutia.

Wigan has become internationally renowned. He holds exhibits and sells his miniature sculptures for tens of thousands of dollars. He’s been highly profiled for his skill and has been awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his services in art.

As I watch the video, I contemplate these microscopic creations, and I can’t help but think about how many of these inmates might have had similar discouragements growing up. The more and more I come to the jail, the less I can ignore the socio-economic and racial implications around me. Those in these walls are predominately of ethnicities other than white and most likely come from a lower income bracket. It’s a social discussion I don’t want to or feel I can tackle right now, but one that’s constantly got me thinking about most of these inmates’ past and current circumstances.

Towards the end of class, a tour of kids walks by the classroom. The jail calls it “Scared Straight,” a program that’s meant to show children what can happen if they break the law. A few of the inmates mention how the officers bring the kids right through their cell blocks, and the discussion veers back to the cells.“They’re awful. And small,” the one guy says to me. “You know the size of that bathroom down the hall that you’ve been in. Like that,” he says. “So small.”

Small, I think. Small. How are they going to find inspiration inside that tiny block? How are they going to write themselves out of a life and a world that lies on the bottom rung of our societal hierarchy? A cell. A jail. Incarcerated. Constrained.

And then I think of Wigan. Of how he’s learned to slow his heartbeat in order to prevent his hot fingertips from pulsing too much while sculpting. Like learning to beat an addiction, like pulling a finger away from the trigger of a gun, he focuses on what makes him live: finding good in the small and unnoticed.

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by Ella Stone 

Today during the men’s class, the teacher asked one of the inmates how his novel was going. He had been having writer’s block for a while, as he didn’t know what to do with the hero’s lady character.

“So, how did you get over that writer’s block, Marcus?”

“I killed her,” he said.

Everyone laughed. It was halfway through the class, and the energy shifted from quiet and unfamiliar to a lively discussion. I watched strangers respond to each other’s writing, watched most of them raise their hands when asked who was serious about being published writers. They want the same things all amateur writers want. They want the same things I want. I felt the anxiety of teaching at a jail slowly lift from my neck and shoulders.

This week I shadowed both the men and women’s creative writing class at the ACJ.  The more I walk through the bleak walls, the less I notice their suffocating boundaries. The classrooms are brightened by the inmates red scrubs, labels that mark them against gray walls with a color that’s hard to avoid. Op-Eds were the topic of discussion and as a class we looked closely at a couple of their pieces. Dashaun, the one with sleepy eyes, who moves his head so slowly when he talks that it seems he’s placing it down for the night to mold his thin pillow, wrote about mandatory drug laws. He wrote about how unjust they were for Black and Latino populations, how 5 grams of crack will get you five years whereas it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to be sentenced the same jail time. He says it needs to be changed.

In the women’s class, I paced behind them as they typed their Op-Eds into computers. One wrote about domestic violence, the difficult struggle between staying and protecting the children vs. finding the courage to leave whilst putting the children in danger. Another wrote about the judicial system, its unfair process, its power to arrest and charge in a second upon entering a living room without any solid background information.

I started wondering what I was truly going to do to help their writing, where my knowledge would best be applied, to their structure? Their grammar? Their use of language? Marcus already knew that by killing off his protagonist’s lady he’d be allowing for more possibilities, the option to complicate plot and give the hero a reason to keep going, to seek revenge, to find closure, to search for another lover. Dashaun already knew that his Op-Ed needed heart and honesty but also specific examples to make a point. And the women already knew that their voices would be heard by writing down their pain, even if my eyes were the only ones to see it.

I realized I could teach these inmates all the grammar, structure and language in the world, but what they really needed was a reason to keep writing, a hope that their words could be better. And sitting in that classroom with no windows, I was forced to look at each inmate, to study the way they move and talk, to realize that anyone in their lives who might have been there to listen, to support, to encourage, has been “killed off” in one way or another. When they wrote the novel of their lives, before they were in this creative writing class, their words were spontaneous and passionate, wrongly laid out, chosen for instant gratification just like the actions that put them in this place; they were not toiled over and thought about, painstakingly read. I realized my job was going to be simple: I was going to help them revise their words. And I started to believe that new novels could be written.

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by Ella Stone

“How was your writing week?” the teacher asks from the front of the classroom.

We’re in a small circle, a ring of warm bodies surrounded by cold concrete walls. All women, all eager to share what’s resting inside. They do this at the beginning of every class. Talk about their writing weeks. The good. The bad. The writer’s block. I’m back at the Allegheny County Jail, or ACJ as the employees call it, observing the women’s class this time.

“Sucked. Mine sucked,” says one of the inmates. Her face shifts from the teacher to the floor when she speaks, as though her eyes are being pulled by a string. She goes on to express how her writing week was tough since her sister had been killed the previous month during a big snow storm, a hit-and-run on an icy street in Homewood.

I think of tragedy. The tragedy of these women locked up in here with red suits and thin slippers. She talks about pain, about “losing it” every time she sits down in her cell to write about her sister’s death. We listen. I think about how this writing class could easily be a three-hour therapy session should the lesson plan veer off track. But I realize this opportunity I have to teach at a jail is my chance to show these inmates how writing is therapy, how it can heal. I could give them excerpts from prison writers like Jimmy Santiago Baca or Ken Lamberton so they could read for themselves how writing preserves parts of our lives. Or I could give them a memoir, an essay, a poem.

We continue our circle of discussion. The woman sitting next to me raises her hand: “I’ve got a story to tell. I’ve got a story to tell. I just need someone to help me write it down,” she says gripping the pages of her notebook with clutched fingers, lifting the sheets in the air. I see words scribbled in pencil filling each page to the edge. The writing is illegible from my angle, but I know there’s something powerful in between those sheets just by the look in her eyes. They’re hazel and youthful, despite a few surrounding wrinkles, and they turn to me in the middle of class, glancing down at a poem as she slides it onto my desk. “Will you read this?” she whispers, like the plea of a child in middle school passing a note to her best friend. I read it slowly, making sure to take in every single word and space so she knows I’m really trying. The verbs have power and the images linger, but the syntax is off. And I’m eager to show her how to improve that. But the subject needs no improvement. The poem is about memories that are locked up and dusty in the cellar of a basement, grayed and forgotten in darkness, stifled by walls, and untouched by the living.

“You had a good writing week,” I whisper.

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by Ella Stone

It takes forever to get into the Allegheny County Jail. Between the four of us, we only have two quarters, which we stick in the parking meter out front. Once past the first set of doors, a police officer approaches us: “Ladies, you need to lock up all your stuff in the lockers, no keys, no sunglasses, no phones.” “We don’t have any quarters,” we say rummaging through pockets. We bump into each other, unsure of what to do next: four free women voluntarily coming to jail, eager and excited to get inside its walls. A woman standing by the lockers turns towards our frazzled mess, “Here, I have a quarter.” “Oh thank you, thank you.” We feed the borrowed quarter to the small locker, lock up our things, and pass through a metal detector.

The guy in charge leads us through metal detector number two and a woman officer scans us up and down. Daylight peers in through the main glass doors, and as we pass through each stage of security, the light slowly fades behind concrete walls. My eyes adjust to fluorescent, revealing bleak, cream hallways. I’ve never been in a jail, but imagined this was how it might be. Behind glass panels sits a large group of prisoners listening to a pastor. One eyes me, locking to my ponytail and earrings; I feel his stare until we close a two-inch steel door behind us.

It feels like many classrooms I’ve been in before–chalkboards, computers, desks, and a book shelf–but rather than filled with energetic children, difficult teenagers, or nicely dressed college students, this classroom is full of prisoners. Twelve men dressed in thin red pants and v-neck shirts sit at computers, shifting big legs in their seats. They give us a nod, a quiet “hello” or a mere look in our direction. My heart thuds like it used to before my ballet performances, but I’m more worried about how I’ll see the audience, rather than how they’ll see me. I’m expecting criminals, and I’m worried about how uncomfortable, unsafe I might feel. I try not to think about why each one’s here. I try not to care.

I’m observing a creative writing class at the county jail, one that I’ll soon be teaching with fellow grad students. I sit in a chair in the middle of the room, facing my back to a prisoner. I hear him breathe in and out, long steady blows behind me. My fear lessens as the teacher continues her lesson. Some men talk quietly to neighbors, others sit in silence at their computers, and some call out words for the teacher to put up on the board. They’re writing a haiku together.

After class, the heavy breather comes up to me and tells me he’s a rapper, so he wants “to write poetry but it ain’t right ‘cuz all the rappers have been goin’ to jail recently.” One asks me how long I’ve been in school. “Damn” is his response and he tells me he wants to go back to school, “down south where it’s warm, so [he] can get into business.” One talks about how he “just wants to write, man” how he “just wants to learn, man.” Men write on notepads in their empty cells and bring them to class every week, hoping their words and my guidance can provide the air they need to lift up their heels, to imagine themselves beyond walls. Or maybe just the sanity to wait between them.

They ask when we’re coming back. “Soon,” we say, “soon.” We head out through the same doors, the same hallways, the same detectors, but this time we walk around the laser beams. I remember our awkward entrance and think about how long it took for us to pass through these doors, how badly we wanted to get in, and how easy it is for us to get out.

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