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.”
