A Final Prison Summary

There is an electricity in the room- a vibrant hum carrying through the giggles and big smiles of the whole room. After each group reads their revisionary thoughts to the rest, there is raucous applause. Everything from big changes to small ones is exciting. All, though, geared towards saving Antigone’s life, sometimes at the cost of Ismene’s if necessary. She is the criminal, but hers is the loss honor most protests. My group is the only one to act out the altered scenes; our changes are an enormous amalgamation of four people’s revisions, and still no one dies. Birdy plays as our Antigone, Tam fills Creon’s throne (a five-chair stack), Lucy plays Haemon, Kieres and Anne are the chorus, and I stepped in for Ismene.  Our changes are for sisterhood, for unity among the youths of the play outside the bounds of blood. Ismene helps Antigone bury their brother’s body. Haemon not only argues with Creon, but helps Ismene and Antigone to overthrow him with their words, removes an unjust king without spilling blood.  All three rule as a collective- a just oligarchy. We are silly and excited and stepping on each other as much as we do each other’s lines. It is comfortable and loose and immersive, and Birdy can’t stop smiling. Tam, who hasn’t read the play, is just as engaged as the rest of us. There are big cheers at the end; everyone looks like they’ve won  grand prize. It is beautiful. The energy doesn’t die once we’ve all shared, either. Our conversation flows and bubbles all the way to the end of class; it is the most involved we have ever had a room full of people.

In Jody’s class on Tuesday, all we could talk about is how much we wish we could keep that atmosphere every week; partially due to the constraints of the material, we could not keep this same kind of lesson plan for a while. “Brothers and Keepers” did not lend itself at all to the same type of creativity and flexibility that “Burial at Thebes” did. We spent a long time wishing there was a way to make everyone energized again, though we could not do so until our day of peotry. It felt so good to see everyone so happy and carefree, to know they had found an environment, a third space, within which they were free to exist outside their blue uniforms.

That was definitely a wish of mine in going to the prison. While I was personally very aware of my likely lack of impact on a broad scale simply by discussing literature in a room that complied to the system itself, I wanted to at least make the women happy. We talked in our first class about very clearly not being a charity or volunteer group, determined to revel in our own goodness rather than actually focusing on the convicts’ needs. While this was mostly a very important understanding for us to reach, I think it made us afraid to acknowledge the service we DID provide them with. We chose to make the experience of the prison distinctly Not About Us.

I think that idea is inherently tied to why I am having so much difficulty writing this reflection. 

What did I learn from going into the facility?

I cannot say that I am sure I know anything about what I have learned- or at least I lack the words to describe this subject that we treated almost like a taboo. What did we get out of it? We weren’t supposed to be thinking about that, about ourselves, about benefitting off the people inside. So how, then, can I put those swallowed words and thoughts into physical form? Is there a direct way to overcome a semester of this determined taboo? 

Here, then, is a list of thoughts that either arose because of the prison or were reinforced or slightly altered by my experiences. I cannot say I know exactly why I associate all of them with this subject, or can tie them to any particular events, but they are the start to answering what I got out of the facility.

1. People are people, no matter what other labels you put on them. This is probably one of my cheesier conclusions, but it’s true. Getting to know the people we read with really brought home to me the cruelty of the label “criminal”,  and the harsh ways it could permanently alter someone’s life.
2. It’s significantly harder to balance the complexity of others’ personhoods if you don’t care enough to listen. While no person can ever tell the full story of what happened to them (as they can’t be in the minds of everyone involved), so much more can be misunderstood if their understanding goes unheard in favor of others’.
3. I will not forget the people I met in prison; I will not judge them for whatever information I may learn about them down the road. They trusted us with their thoughts, their imaginings, their analyses. If for nothing else, they have earned my respect and I owe them fair hearing.
4. So much of academia/what is seen as intelligent is based on unfounded stigma around who is capable of achieving what. 
5. A prison is a community too. It may be a fucked up, forced one sometimes, but it is one where you can just as easily find people who will care (and who you can care about) as anywhere else in the world.
6. The line between “good people” and “bad people” does not exist. There are, maybe, good actions and bad ones, but they can be done or happen to anyone. They are almost random, and there is no way to predict or generalize who that is true for.
7. There is a reason that I, as a white woman, can feel safe in that space, and that is its lack of immediate threat to me. 

For all the many good things i took away, I would not say that everything in the prison was a positive experience. I wouldn’t want to give anyone that false an impression. There were many days when walking into the doors of check-in made my bones fill with dread. For the most part, I felt so drained upon getting back into the van that I could barely stomach the thought of interacting with anyone as usual back at Bryn Mawr. There was one day in particular where just being in the prison as a visitor felt so very oppressive to all that I could handle then that I said exactly three words in our entire time inside. It was a very disheartening time, but I feel like I am much more aware of my boundaries, and the consequences I am emotionally able to deal with if others are provoked. It is sobering to realize exactly where they stand, particularly in that environment, as one in need of more empathy/sympathy, and particularly as someone who would one day like to help people struggling under mental and emotional weights. I have a limit in my capacity to deal with the world. I am not invincible, infallible, or perfect in any regard, as much as I might like to be perfect for them.

We created a separate space, though, where we could all coexist without questioning each other’s integrity or background or motivation for being there. We all CHOSE to be there; our choice was the only prerequisite for the book group. We cared and we learned together. We weren’t perfect, by any standards, but we existed outside, while physically inside. It was about us as much as them, and that’s why the space could work so well.

I have not by any means unpacked all the ways working in the prison has impacted me or changed my thought processes. Years into my future, I’ll still catch myself thinking fragments of thoughts inspired by the book group. I sincerely hope to be able to work inside again someday, this time as someone aware of my desire to create a third space. I would like to see how verbalizing that wish would change the way we work inside or the atmosphere of the groups.