November 14, 2015 - 13:49
Book group yesterday felt discombobulating, frustrating, and important. I found myself torn between my frustration that we weren't completing the lesson plan as effectively as we had hoped, and my strong desire to give the emotions in the room the space they deserved.
Leading the activity around stories of ourselves as readers, I got into a conversation with one of the women about Brothers and Keepers. It was hard for her to focus on the book, she explained, because it hit so close to home. The narrative and description of the prison in the story led her mind to wander to her own impending release next February, and how she was committing to change her actions so she wouldn't be returning to the prison for the fourth time. This turned into a conversation about her crime, which transformed surprisingly naturally into a conversation about my life. "Do you have a boyfriend?" she asked. I hadn't been asked this question in years--and when I explained why, she laughed, insisting that she didn't want to assume anything but it was "pretty obvious." Suddenly excited, she hurried out of the room and returned with pictures of her girlfriend--"See, doesn't she look like a boy, like you??" I asked her all about her girlfriend, and we shared stories about the women we were seeing. In that moment, I felt so very proud to be queer. That turning point, that "oh my god, you too?" made that moment of connection so incredibly rich. I wanted to linger in it for hours, trading stories. I wanted to ask her what her queerness meant to her, what it meant to have a partner who had been in and out of the prison system with her, what that love looked like, felt like. When it hit me that we should be moving on, I felt frustrated and anxious. Isn't this connection the very reason we're here? Wondering what we could possibly get out of a free-write that couldn't be gained from a one-on-one conversation, I found myself checked out for the rest of class. I didn't want to be there, in that bigger group, so far from the relationship I had begun to build.
Now, outside of class for a day, I'm still grappling with my gut feeling that that conversation was all that really mattered. I know that we came into the prison with educational purposes to some extent, intending to focus on reading and writing. But I can't help but feel like those are only useful in our case in the gateways they provide into personal and honest conversation and moments of connection. We aren't teaching reading skills, nor are we training the women in writing structure. So what else are these activities, if not multiple methods for sparking discussion? And if that's all they are, why not see these conversations as exactly why we are here, as the most perfect outcome, even if they seem to "interrupt" the flow of the lesson plan? This week's book group was disjointed and in many ways chaotic, but it is the closest I have ever felt to my purpose in the prison. I am so glad that that space was made, that all of this happened.