Every Wednesday San Quentin inmates assemble to write and share prose and poetry, forming a group known as the Brothers In Pen.
These creative writers are part of an ongoing project that publishes anthologies of prisoners’ writing. This September at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Zoe Mullery, who facilitates Brothers In Pen, shared the group’s work for a crowd of 60 listeners. Carol Newborg of the William James Association hosted the event.
Former San Quentin inmates Henry Montgomery, Charles Talib Brooks, Carl Irons and Jerry Elster each read their own work.
The four readers sat with one another on a couch situated on a makeshift stage facing the audience.
Elster started the readings with “Hip Hop Ain’t Easy in the Ghetto.” Elster is currently serving as Healing Justice Program Coordinator with American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco.
Henry Montgomery followed with his “If Only I….” an interactive theatrical piece wherein he engaged three people from the audience to participate in his enacted soliloquy. “If Only I…….” comprised an imagined conversation that Montgomery would have if he were able to go back in time and have a chance to talk to his younger self before he committed the crime of taking someone’s life, which resulted in a 16-years-to-life sentence. Montgomery joined Mullery’s first writing class in 2007.
Charles Talib Brooks read “Summer of Love.” By his own testimony, writing in prison became Brooks’ educational system. It also helped him to articulate the pain he experienced because he was an introvert. Like many other men in the program, Brooks said, writing became a way for him to learn, grow, share and contribute to others through his short stories. Brooks later told the audience that he had wanted to read Noble Butler’s “I Am” piece but wasn’t able to do so due to time constraints.
Finally, Carl Irons read a story by Kris Himmelberger titled “22.8 Miles: A Memoir.”
The readings were followed by a Q&A period. The formerly incarcerated men answered questions about transformation with authority.
A number of people asked for advice about their lives. A high school senior told how utterly anxious he was to leave the familiar and comforting life he knew as a teenager. The student knelt down on one knee near the foot of the stage and confessed he felt like he was running out of time. He asked the readers, “What advice do you have for me about moving on?”
Jerry Elster said that the question was “profound.” “There is so much more to the world than what you have already experienced,” Elster told the young man.
Montgomery added, “I’m going to answer your question from a relationship perspective. I got married in April, and I’m already getting a divorce. I cried for 37 days straight. I pray and meditate to face the fear of not wanting to be alone. Your very question is a form of moving on; today you have moved on.”
Brooks told the student, “Just remember that the word ‘fear’ can be an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real or Face Everything And Recover.”
‘DARKNESS IN THE GOLDEN STATE’
A well-attended fundraising event sponsored by Legal Services For Prisoners With Children (LSPC) was held in August at the Luggage Room Gallery on Market Street in San Francisco.
LSPC is a nonprofit organization located at 1540 Market St. in San Francisco. Its main mission is to organize communities impacted by the criminal justice system and advocate to release incarcerated people, to restore human and civil rights and to reunify families and communities. LSPC focuses on providing legal support, trainings, advocacy, public education, grassroots mobilization and development of community partnerships.
Dorsey Nunn, executive director of LSPC, has more than 35 years of experience working on prison- related issues. He was a co-founder of All of Us or None, an LSPC project started by formerly incarcerated people in 2003. Nunn was involved with many social justice organizations from their beginnings, including Critical Resistance and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
This event was to raise public awareness about the horrific effects Security Housing Units, often referred to as “solitary confinement,” through visual and written art forms donated by inmates currently incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison, San Quentin Prison and prisons elsewhere in the country. Featured were works by San Quentin inmate artists Thomas Winfrey, Ronnie Goodman and others.
In addition to thought-provoking art, photos and written works on display, Nunn read his original poems and Mark G. performed a dramatic monologue.
The evening also featured a screening of a short film, “Well Contested Sites,” a 13- minute dance/theater performance that explores the issue of mass incarceration and the complexity of experiences faced by those incarcerated. The film was a collaborative effort by Bay Area performing artists — some of whom were previously incarcerated — and filmmaker Austin Forbord and choreographer Amie Dowling. The performance piece was developed and filmed on Alcatraz Island.
After the event, a senior friend who attended commented, “I grew up pretty straight-laced without much prior sympathy for those who committed crimes and have to pay the penalty. Thus, I know prison life is awful, especially solitary confinement … Fortunately, the beliefs we grow up with often change or diminish as we age, and from my own experience, I can now empathize with the feeling of isolation.”
The evening’s purpose was summed up by Amie Dowling, co-director and choreographer of “Well Contested Sites:”
“…(may) our efforts and investments continue to interrupt the oppression of mass incarceration and celebrate the artistic and intellectual genius that resides in the men and women most impacted by the prison industrial complex.”