What I Want the Book to Do

I want to establish that the men in the workshops are part of "us," not some separate "other" that is "distinct" from free society and therefore not worthy of concern and rights. I want to represent incarcerated men as complex characters that fall outside the stereotypes that haunt prisoners/inmates. I want to illustrate the role that creative, expressive discussion and writing can play in finding one's "story," as well as cultivate and imagine a new "future," by putting that into words. Reading, too, can broaden horizons of what is possible by rendering to the imagination different worlds. I want to demonstrate how a community that supports honest expression, and the courage it takes to do that, can transcend the racial boundaries of prison culture. I also want to show that literacy, by itself, is no panacea, and that political, social, and economic change has to be part of prison reform. All of this happens through story. When we hear stories from worlds different from our own, we can lower the walls of limitation and imagine a world that we have never really known. It is then that we can create possibilities of change. Narrative and creative possibility form the linguistic foundations that can then support doing things better than we currently do them. They must lead to critical thinking and action. We have to act, even if that action is symbolic.

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