The Places They Are Not

Someone asked me what type of men come to the prison writing workshops. Kind and thoughtful person though she was, she was incredulous when I said that those men were as diverse as any group I encounter out here in the "free world," much more diverse, actually. She said she could not imagine that. From there I looked to all the places inmates aren't in the narrative we have crafted about them; I looked to the many representations -- in film, books, music, advertising, TV -- of what "regular" (and more privileged) men can do but where inmates (and many other marginalized groups) are conspicuously absent. I looked to the omissions that form a wall of what is possible to conjure up when we imagine the word "inmate," or ex-inmate. A very short list: I don't see inmates at universities. I don't see them reflected as lawyers, judges, legislators, CEOs, preachers, soldiers, artists, writers, musicians, mountain climbers, meditation teachers, yoga masters, hardware clerks, race car drivers, or bureaucrats. Very rarely do I see them as loving fathers, good spouses, brothers, or helping friends. In short, they are limited to what we all know from the familiar narrative of the men in orange. No wonder they are so easy to erase from the mind's line of sight, to pigeon-hole as outcast, loser, bad apple, sociopath, thug; no wonder it is so easy to deny that those who are invisible will someday return to claim the empty place that must be colored in by a creative, hard-won possibility.