September 13, 2015 - 16:31
I began Friday feeling rushed and stressed, having scheduled multiple meetings for the morning (not the most productive move). During each of my meetings, I was fidgeting in my seat and was thinking only about the afternoon. Finally, we all piled into the van for the journey to the prison. I had a heightening feeling of anxiety when we entered, partly because I had forgotten my paper copy of the lesson plan in the van. It was a tiny thing, and easily solved, but for some reason it almost sent me into a panic, because I wanted to be perfectly prepared for anything. I wasn't nervous about the prisoners; rather, I was terrified of the Correctional Officers, who had the power to treat us however they wanted. We went through metal detectors and were patted down twice, once more roughly by a male CO, which I was not comfortable with. But we were the lambs in this situation, utterly under their control. I was relieved when we finally got to the classroom, away from their eyes, and the women began to trickle in.
After I spoke my designated part, the introduction to the class and each other, I began to relax even more. Everyone seemed attentive to each other’s physical and mental space from the start, which was encouraging. A number of people also talked about already feeling comfortable in the space, which seemed like an anomaly in this type of situation. I reminded myself that we were actually the would-be intruders in this space, and not them, so they were probably already feeling a sense of belonging and community, even if it was not necessarily for the right reasons.
The women were eager to share their opinions, about the book and about everything else. It was clear that they did not get much opportunity to do so, and that this class came as a welcome distraction and outlet. Because we knew this, the members of the teaching group were reluctant to step in and try to focus the conversation back to the book.
As the conversation went on, Andrea* brought up, relating to an image in Citizen, the idea of being a carrier for something, but in the end isolated from it. She compared it to the system that they were a part of and yet isolated from. This brought the Fine and Ruglis reading to mind. “…ideologies about merit, deservingness, and blame drip feed into the soul, tagging some bodies as worthy and others as damaged”(21). The dehumanization of prison life grows the idea, deep inside of you, that you deserve to be there. The blame is not placed on the system but on your own body. The picture in the book is of a body, a shadowy figure with flowers growing on its back. The way that I see Andrea’s interpretation is that this female-looking figure is nourishing the flowers, feeding them the way that the prison-industrial complex and the work that the prisoners do is feeding capitalistic society, and yet she is isolated from them, is unwanted among them. This is interesting, considering that the same people who interpreted things this way were very against the “angry black woman” stereotype and believed that the way to address racial inequalities in the system was to stop perpetuating those stereotypes by practicing nonviolence and peace. In a lot of ways, it seemed like they were seeing the system that was in front of them, but were denying parts of it to themselves. They also seemed to be using their own interpretations of the pictures as a way to express their frustration with the system that they maybe did not feel that they had the right to speak about. It’s a stark contrast to Bi-Co and just college classes in general – we talk about how we need to fix an entire system and do not refer to things on a personal level as much. I suppose it comes from our illusion of free will, that we are free so we are not perpetuating a system or pawns in one. Meanwhile, these women have no illusion of freedom in any way so they see themselves as a direct result of it, and on more personal terms.
I am looking forward to next week and hearing more reactions to Citizen. I am sure that the racially charged stories will speak on a deeper level with many of them, as they spoke about their experiences with racism with so much passion. I’m predicting that their experience with the book will be different from ours in many ways, because of the differences in the way that they see the system.
*names have been changed