San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

America stagnated by “compounding moral debts”

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Two essays that appeared in The Atlantic magazine set up Ta-Nehisi Coates as a voice for African-Americans. He wrote The Case for Reparations in 2014 and in 2015, he produced Letter to My Son.

In The Case for Reparations Coates cites, “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.”

Coates argues, “Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” In the article, Coates uses the in-depth history of Clyde Ross, a real person, to support the case for reparations.

In Letter to My Son, excerpted before publication of Between the World and Me, Coates tells his 15-year-old,

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” The father cites his own life and compelling evidence to say that African-Americans live under a deliberately inflicted state of violence.

Since the publication of those works, there has been little movement to push for the US to consider its “moral debt” to the descendants of slaves. Since 2015, police have killed hundreds of African-Americans either wrongly or mistakenly, yet no laws were broken in doing so.

Coates’ latest focus on African-Americans combines all of his historical knowledge in, The Water Dancer (2019), a novel full of magical realism.

The historical fiction is set during the oppressive time of US slavery. The protagonist, Hiram, struggles against what it means to have a father and brother who are white, yet his darkened skin enslaves him. In the midst of subjugation, he has his eyes on a slave woman that his White uncle owns.

Coates uses his scholarly knowledge about the Underground Railroad, fugitive slave laws and the abolitionists as fodder to set up various dramas that his characters must navigate. In doing so, Coates created a world different from reality, while at the same time a believable world based on American history.

The following narration describes the feelings involved in Hiram’s enslavement. He fo- cuses most acutely on the sepa- ration from his family, another parallel to incarceration.

To sell a child right from under his mother, you must know that mother only in the thinnest way possible. To strip a man down, condemn him to be beaten, flayed alive, then anointed with salt water, you cannot feel him the way you feel your own. You cannot see yourself in him, lest your hand be stayed, and your hand must never be stayed, because the moment it is, the Tasked will see that you see them, and thus see yourself.

The following passage points to Hiram’s acceptance of the conditions that created his stark reality as well as his detachment from humanity: Slavery is everyday longing, is being born into a world of forbidden victuals and tantalizing untouchables—the land around you, the clothes you hem, the biscuits you bake.

Coates is able to capture Hiram’s docility and hopelessness that comes with slavery, which also is a condition shared with the incarcerated and rehabilitated: So many of us who went, went with dignity and respect. And it occurred to me how absurd it was to cling to morality when surrounded by people who had none.

Coates uses Hiram’s memory to recall events in great detail as a literary device to drive the novel’s plot, which translates to “freedom by any means

necessary.”
The Water Dancer is the product of Coates’ thinking in all of his works—that African Americans are integrated to all of US history, not just segregated segments that seem irrelevant today.

The story is a remarkably poignant exploration of oppression that has happened and can’t be changed. In The Water Dancer, Coates explores the possibility of what can be changed by using historical fiction and magical realism as a guide.

Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News

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Veteran journalist Ted Koppel got it right when he said William J. Drummond proves to be the right person to tell the tale of San Quentin News (SQN). Drummond’s credibility as the storyteller comes from his long and eventful career as a journalist, UC Berkeley journalism professor and his once or twice a week venture inside the SQN newsroom office for more than eight years to mentor incarcerated journalists.

Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News, (2020) is a detailed account of the journey that led to SQN becoming a first-rate prisoner produced newspaper. The newspaper was reborn in 2008 after a 20-year hiatus. Maverick warden Robert Ayers, Jr. wanted to break down the rumor mill and give prisoners trustworthy information about life at the Q.

Since then, SQN has been honored with an award for “extraordinary journalism” by the Society of Professional Journalists and written about by at least five major newspapers.

Drummond began his own relationship with SQN in mid- 2012 by holding a college class in the newsroom. Since then more than 80 of his students have helped incarcerated journalists develop and structure their stories before handing them over to the more than half- dozen advisers. At SQN, the advisers, who are professional journalists, do the final editing and proofing and have done so since its 2008 resurgence.

Drummond has witnessed the monthly paper go to press in spite of major limitations:

no internet access, slow access to outside sources, no smart phones and a literal wall that keeps the staffers away from the community. Drummond notes, “What is lacking in convenience is made up for with grit and determination.”

Much of the grit and determination came from SQN’s third editor in chief, the late Arnulfo Timoteo Garcia, who frequently spoke about how Federal Judge Thelton Hender- son impacted him. After Henderson had visited San Quentin in the summer of 2010, he urged Garcia to invite as many people as possible to come inside San Quentin to see the rehabilitative efforts of the prisoners.

Garcia followed that advice by inviting judges, district attorneys, county sheriffs, state and federal lawmakers to at- tend and participate in San Quentin forums— we’ve now had more than two dozen of them—where prisoners talk about their incarceration experience, rehabilitative efforts and reentry plans.

The forums, modeled after restorative justice circles, give the outside public safety officials an authentic and intimate view of prisons and its occupants.

As a direct result of the forums, San Francisco district attorneys created a Formerly Incarcerated Advisory Board. Newly elected District Attorney Chesa Boudin said that he intends to keep the board.

Prison Truth examines the advantages of having stories told by people directly affected by incarceration. The resulting news narratives are from the vantage point of embedded re- porters.

One of the newspaper’s original mandates is to scrutinize programs designed for rehabilitation.

“Accountability interviews,” ones in which incarcerated people talk about what they did to land in prison, appear regularly. The stories not only teach by example, they reveal the resilience of the human spirit. For prisoners who are committed to rehabilitation, the articles serve as guides.

Prison officials recognize these benefits so it’s not surprising that the newspaper and its staff writers have gained the support of an assortment of public safety officials.

Drummond asks, “Are the inmate staff’s efforts journal- ism? The question he poses is bold, because traditionally, journalism has been viewed as impartial and objective with- out an advocacy role. So, if it isn’t traditional journalism, is what we are doing worth it? He concludes in the affirmative: “I believe journalism is an effective tool for rehabilitating people in prison…Journalism places an additional burden on writers: What they write must be accurate, true, and above all fair.”

I can attest to Drummond’s claim. I have learned that when incarcerated people read stories about redemption, recovery and returning to the community, they are inspired to do the same.

I have heard free people talk about the ways that articles in SQN have changed their own incarcerated loved ones. I’ve also heard free people talk about how heartening it is, for the first time, to read positive words about their sons, fathers, brothers, husbands and boyfriends.

I have witnessed children reunite with parents and incarcerated men drop gangs, dope and bad behavior after taking advantage of available programs to reunite with their families. So, is what we do good journalism?

Prison Truth gives readers the chance to answer this question.

A journey of losing of a loved one and working through the trauma

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A granddaughter’s wish came true when Brian Cahill decided to write about his son, her father John Cahill.

Cops, Cons, and Grace: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Suicide, (2018) is a recount of how Brian Cahill reconciled the suicide of his beloved son, John, and found dignity for his family.

Brian takes readers on a step-by-step path to a filling grace that’s rooted in service to police officers and seeing to the spiritual needs of incarcerated men.

San Quentin’s Catholic Chaplin George Williams writes:

“Brian Cahill found healing and strength in an unexpected place—with convicts at San Quentin state prison—after the suicide of his son, a 42-year-old police officer, plunged him into unimaginable grief. This gripping, personal and inspiring journey reveals the power of grace over death as the author channels his heartbreak into loving action, honoring his son’s life by teaching suicide awareness and prevention to police officers.”

There are important lessons regarding suicide prevention all readers learn from what Brian writes, “…I’ve learned the research shows that most people who commit suicide — not just cops but almost everyone who does it — believe they’re a burden, and those who love them will be better off when they’re gone.”

The anguish is clear as he goes on to say: “We all screw up. Some of our screw-ups are felonies and some are not. But they all have consequences…My wife has told me I have to forgive myself. My counselor has told me I have to forgive myself, And now I’m standing in a prison chapel and a convicted murderer is telling me that I have to forgive myself.

“I don’t know if it’s unique, but it’s pretty special that a family of a cop who dies would receive a condolence message from a bunch of San Quentin prisoners…I sit there on the wooden pew in this prison chapel, listening to a man who may never get out of here, nicely telling me to get a grip, to get some perspective.”

Cahill stands in the middle of two entities, believed to be against each other — yet Brian recalls his son once saying, “To my dad, the social worker,” and that’s where Brain finds his calling.

It might seem hard to understand why an incarcerated person would want to read about the suicide of a police officer, yet in this story, the father is someone incarcerated people rely upon in their healing journey.

The story is extremely well written, so that readers understand the sensitivity of the father, that Brain Cahill had to work through some trauma—that he had to seek and find forgiveness and remorse—which almost every incarcerated person experiences.

Brain Cahill didn’t only rely on his own experience. He continually sought professional help.

Flying Kites depicts the harsh realities of isolation in prison

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A blending of visual manipulation with a literary representation of solitary confinement

Students of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project produced a compelling and well-researched portrayal of the living conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison in an effort to show what it’s like to live in isolation.

At first glance, Flying Kites: a Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike (2019) is about Security Housing Units (SHU) at Pelican Bay. But it is also about so much more. Layered into the plot is a father, Rodrigo, doing everything he can to reconnect with his daughter, Luz. It is through their story that we understand how painful confinement is, both solitary and otherwise.

“Writing letters is the only way I can break up the monotony and loneliness of the day,” Rodrigo writes to Luz. Without telling Luz that he plagiarized Jack Henry Abbott’s memoir, The Belly of the Beast, he adds, “Solitary confinement in prison can alter the ontological makeup of a stone.”

Through letters, Luz’s feelings for her father deepen. She is disturbed when he writes descriptions of his living conditions. It is difficult for her but she works at integrating her daily life with the nine-hour drive between Oakland and Pelican Bay to visit her father.

The tragedy of Rodrigo’s relationship with his daughter derives from his eagerness to communicate—he couldn’t find the right words to express the psychological impact that long-term isolation had on him. When Luz discovers the truth, their relationship becomes strained.

In the graphic novel, the students used eight frames on a single page to show Rodrigo living in a cell. The subsequent frames get repetitively and increasingly smaller and crowded until, three pages later, more than 200 frames show Rodrigo living in his cell appear on a single page. Readers/viewers get a stark feel of Rodrigo’s lonely life.

“I spent 12 to 15 hours a day pacing. The rhythm of my feet on the concrete floor was the only thing that calmed me,” says Rodrigo as he comes to terms with the fact that he’ll be in Pelican Bay indefinitely. He adds, “Ten years later…I appear to have settled down. Yet the scream inside me has never stopped.”

Flying Kites has twists and turns—nothing is smooth and not all the problems of incarceration are solved. The Stanford students went to great lengths to make the story as authentic as possible. They used virtual reality technology to get their own taste of life in solitary confinement. They also read letters from prisoners who were currently or had previously been in solitary confinement.

There are lessons in Flying Kites universal to any reader, such as the power of family connections, accountability, the importance of believing in yourself and finding an authentic voice.

Eleven students, two teaching assistants and three instructors, collaborated on this storytelling project. It’s the brainchild of award winning author Adam Johnson. Johnson visited San Quentin’s creative writing program last August.

Although the hunger strikes did lead to the end of indefinite SHU terms and greater access to rehabilitative programs for prisoners, isolation in other ways still exists in prisons. Flying Kites offers readers vivid pictures as well as a poignant understanding of the overall living conditions for incarcerated people.

Appendix C: Interview with Charles Carbone offers extended commentary about what happened to many prisoners after the hunger strike ended.

Carbone concludes that systemic problems still exists, such as ending negative consequences from perceived associations with other incarcerated people that come from dubious or confirmed sources.

The United Nations has determined that keeping a person in solitary confinement more than 14 days amounts to torture.

Historical fiction gives account of the slave trade

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Homegoing, a debut novel by Yaa Gyasi (2016), explores the unhealed wounds of slavery, compellingly rendered through several hundred years, seven generations, fourteen characters over a span of two continents. The title, “Homegoing,”comes from an old African-American belief that death allowed an en- slaved person’s spirit to travel back to Africa.

The saga, which is conveyed in interlinked stories, follows two African tribes connected by half-sisters unknown to each other. One sister becomes a part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, while the other grows up in Africa.

The narrative has a distinctively feminine and African-based voice, making it a thought-provoking read, particularly to an American audience.

As an example, she de- scribes the sensitivity that comes from caring for someone as if it’s: An unapologetic, unquestioning love like that of the stray dog that follows the man home from work every evening, happy, simply, to be allowed to walk nearby. She describes The Castle’s interior, a place where slaves were kept prior to their trans-Atlantic voyage to the Americas as such: There was no sunlight. Darkness was day and night and everything in between.

According to a blurb on the cover by The Christian Science Monitor, Gyasi has “a poet’s ability to paint a scene with a handful of phrases.”

Homegoing’s chapter structure reminded me of There There by Tommy Orange (2019), reviewed in SQ News August 2019, where each chapter is an experience of a character. Orange shaped the storyline in the characters’ desire to arrive at a place they all had in common, but Gyasi chapters are a character’s experience that lasts a generation. Each of Gyasi’s chapters also ties historical relevance to events, examples include: what it was like for African tribes to trade slaves to the English; how blacks lived through the convict lease laws after the Civil War; what it means to be a sharecropper; the reasoning behind The Great Migration; Africa’s decolonization efforts.

Gyasi’s narratives interject a subtle sense of cruelty into how a racist society drains the life out of Black people; meanwhile, the desire of Black people to live peacefully and on its own terms is never lost.

(Editor’s note: The saga of Black people striving for meaningful existence was told in The Southern Phoenix, Rosemary Jenkins (2017), reviewed in SQ News February 2018, an historical novel that examined The Great Migration and its connection to civil-rights.)

Both novels point out what happened during the height of Jim Crow when Blacks left the south, headed north and west to leave the direct and deadly racism of the south, only to land in a place where to the sophisticated and subtle racism of the rest of America still existed—it’s called “unconscious bias” today.

Gyasi’s characters reveal the emotional toll The Great Mi- gration had on Black Ameri- cans as keenly shown in Wil- lie’s take on getting out of the south:

The first inhale of Harlem air was clean, no coal dust traveling in through the nose to hit the back of the throat, to taste. Just breathing felt exciting.

Gyasi’s description of European treatment of Africans and its reconciliation through Christian forgiveness is particularly insightful:

Forgiveness was an act done after the fact, a piece of the bad deed’s future. And if you point the people’s eye to the future, they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present.

Two thought-provoking chapters: Yaw addresses inter- generational trauma from an American perspective while Akua addresses the topic from an African perspective.

Gyasi does not leave out the “Back to Africa” movement. In the chapter titled, Marcus she describes African-based slave history as follows:

The dirty skeleton of a long-past shame that held the place together began to show itself in blackening concrete, rusty- hinged doors.

In spite of the acute pain and sadness threaded through each chapter, Gyasi finds a way to tie things together in a satisfying ending of an epic tale of struggle and triumph.

Big Wheels to the Big House covers victimization as well as hopes and dreams

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“The world is cold and dark…Who cares?!” That’s what’s on the book cover of Juvenile Offenders: From Big Wheels to the Big House (2018) by Rosemary Jenkins.

The page-turner is a learning journey of what it’s like to survive unthinkable victimization, learn to be accountable and then, in the process, generating personal hopes and dreams.

Juvenile Offenders is an anthology from about two dozen writers, all living in that cold, dark place called prison. That being said, it’s hard not to care after taking in their stories — each from a person directly affected by the criminal justice system. Readers get the opportunity to peek into the writers’ lives through candid commentaries that depict what it’s like to live behind bars. Articles from San Quentin News are included in the anthology, some that I’ve written.

Writer Mark Edwards Vigil is one of the strongest voices in the anthology. He navigates readers chapter by chapter, aptly called Juvenile Offenders, described as “…the collective journey through time of those whose articles are included in it. Each writer has run the gam- ut of the prison system and has come to realize that there is more to life than wasting what remains of it — lost in the grips of drugs, gangs, and criminality.”

Writer Ronald Patterson describes the grip of criminality and coming to realize it as follows: my friends and I were fascinated with players, hustlers, gamblers, dealers, and gangsters because they played by their own rules, despite the law. Ignorantly, we admired and emulated them and would eventually turn into monsters who killed people and destroyed our community.

Patterson’s ability to articulate the impact that his crimes have had on others al- lows readers to witness maturity under the most unlikely circumstances; Patterson il- lustrates the resilience of the human spirit.

Juvenile Offenders is far more than the realization of mistakes and redemption thereof. It is divided into sections that address criminal justice reform advocacy, among the examples: it touches on the benefit of offering aid to college bound incarcerated students; it looks into the “ban the box” campaign (an effort to end employers from asking formerly incarcerated people about prison convictions prior to hiring); as well as the connection between mental health and incarceration.

Here’s what Rosemary Jenkins writes about domestic violence:

“These victims are subject to constant threats, in part, because the offenders have the power to take advantage of their positions in the family hierarchy.” Her goal in Juvenile Offenders is to “define, inform, and educate about domestic violence, offering instruction in on how to recognize such cruel behavior and what to do about it.”

Jenkins’ article in the anthology, The Mentally Ill Do Not Belong in Jail, is also solution based. She writes that people with mental health and drug abuse issues should be treated with appropriate counseling, not punishment.

The chapter, “Vignettes, Poems, and Artwork by In- mates — Writings Meant to Inspire” is the most entertaining section of Juvenile Offenders. It begins with nine pages of artwork that depicts the emotional toll incarceration takes on human beings. From Big Wheels to the Big House is a drawing by A. Wilson that’s used as the book cover. The first image is of a mother holding a child and is placed next to Vigil’s piece, Thinking of You, a greeting card style drawing of flowers and roses—followed by pages of poetry and illustrations that cover subjects such as redemption, cause and effect, aging while incarcerated, and hope.

Juvenile Offenders closes with Vigil writing about get- ting out of prison after 36 years and working toward preventing anyone from go- ing down the road he once traveled. He now teaches youngsters how to recognize and seek authenticity and care from the people around them.

Bringing to life the personal stories of those who carry a life sentence

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Despite our politically polarized country, most people agree that ending mass incarceration is necessary. There is also wide- spread agreement that non-violent drug offenders need treatment, not punishment. However, the focus of most reform is almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Nonviolent drug offenders make up 5% of the prison population. Violent offenders make up at least 50%. If the U.S. is serious about undoing mass incarceration, the long sentences violent offenders serve must be addressed.

Two recently published books do just that: The Meaning of Life—The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences (2018) by Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis, (Kerry Myers, contributor); and Until We Reckon—Violence, Mass, and A Road to Repair (2019) by Danielle Sered.

Marc Mauer
Marc Mauer
Ashley Nellis
Ashley Nellis
Kerry Myers
Kerry Myers

While most people know that the US has more people serving life terms than all other countries, how many more is surprising. The authors of the Meaning of Life, point to a 2016 international study of life imprisonment revealing that the number of people serving life sentences in the U.S. is higher than the combined total in the other 113 countries surveyed.

A cross-country compari- son with the U.S. disclosed that:

• The U.S. accounts for 40% of the world’s lifer population.

• The U.S. locks up its citizens at five to 10 times the rate of Canada and western European nations.

• State and federal governments in the U.S. spend $60 – $80 billion annually on incarceration.

In Meaning of Life, contributor Kerry Myers, an award-winning writer and former lifer, chronicles the lives of six people, whose reckless behavior was responsible for destroying or damaging many lives, including their own. The book, however, is not about hopelessness. Lifers in the book were able to achieve a degree of redemption but only after honestly confronting the ways in which their behavior seriously damaged their victim’s lives. Accountability is also one of the focuses of Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered.

Sered proposes that we reconsider the purpose of incarceration and argues that the needs of everyone, perpetrators of violent crime as well as the survivors of those crimes, are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their behavior and make amends in ways that mean something to the people they have hurt.

One of the six lifers featured in The Meaning of Life is Sam Lewis, who was convicted of a gang-related killing when he was 18 years old.

While incarcerated, Lewis took advantage of every available educational and life skills opportunity. He used his own life experience to offer gang members a way toward societal betterment.

When Lewis got out of prison 24 years later in 2008, he made time to come by the SQNews office with Scott Budnick, a movie producer and the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Collation (ARC) a non-profit that advocates for criminal

justice reform and works to prepare prisoners for life after incarceration. Budnick had just appointed Lewis executive director of ARC. In The Meaning of Life, Myers writes that Budnick appointed him because he was impressed by Lewis’ transformation and believed his experience would be invaluable to people in the same situation. Budnick may have been impressed but, according to Myers, Lewis insists that he’s not the exception to the rule.

“There are others like me who want to do good things and give back, so I try not to allow anyone to exceptionalize me,” Lewis said. This was consistent with the attitude he expressed when we talked in the SQNews room.

There is now a wide body of research that has concluded that the deterrent effect of the criminal justice system is not achieved by long sentences; deterrence is a function of the certainty of punishment, not its severity. These assumptions hold true for crimes ranging from shoplifting to murder.

Mauer and his Sentencing Project colleague, Ashley Nellis argue that there is no practical or moral justification for sentences longer than 20 years.

Myers/Nellis cite numerous studies, reports and statistics that show keeping a person incarcerated for life is not only inhumane, it’s counter-productive. Harsher sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates, since criminal thinking declines as people mature. Thus we’re spending a fortune on geriatric care for older prisoners who pose little threat to public.

There There depicts the story of the Native American traditions

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there-there-book-review

There There by Tommy Orange chronicles the lives of Native Americans in his hometown of Oakland, California. The result is a portrait of a community often erased from depictions of urban life.

After many years of discussing books together San Quentin News senior editor Juan Haines and Berkeley graduate, Democracy Now producer and SQN volunteer, Libby Rainey jointly reviewed There There.

San Quentin News aims to tell stories about humanity and redemption that challenge assumptions about who imprisoned people are. In discussing books not only about mass incarceration, but also about America, love and loss, history and family, we get a better understanding of ourselves.

Libby: There There takes its name from a misinterpretation of a famous Gertrude Stein quote. In 1937, Stein wrote of her hometown Oakland, California “there’s no there there.” Her words have been cemented into cultural history as a literary diss of Oakland. But in There There, Dene Oxendene, a Native American also raised in Oak- land knows Stein is referring to the far-reaching changes that Oakland has underwent over the years, however:

For Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it’s been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, un-returnable covered memory. There is no there there.

Just as Dene rejects the man’s incorrect understanding of the quote, Orange challenges racist portrayals of Native American people.

In its opening Orange writes, “We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and current state as people.”

Orange – a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma– offers a rebuke of these stories with a collage of stories about Native people across generations, classes, experiences and gender.

The novel rejects narratives of death and defeat, in- stead focuses on resistance and resilience. Orange writes, “Getting us to the cities was supposed to be the final necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a five-hundred- year-old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours.”

Juan: There There weaves Native American traditions into present-day urban life with strong over- tones of suffering, broken promises, genocide and assimilation — there’s also cultural pride as well as cultural shame.

Orange created 12 distinct characters to illustrate the conflict, tension, drama, turmoil and anguish. The story’s authenticity comes from a narrative steeped in Native American culture.

An example, when Dene Oxendene finds out that his uncle is dying and asks: “How much time—”

“We don’t have time, Nephew, time has us. It holds us in its mouth like an owl holds a field mouse. We shiver. We Struggle for release, and then it pecks out our eyes and intestines for sustenance and we die the death of field mice.”

Tony Loneman, a major character, sees himself as someone with strong intuition and street smarts… “I’m smart where it counts,” But acknowledges that is not how other people see him — they see a generic Native boy.

Native American genocide haunts this passage, but Tony’s presence on the train represents survival. It raises a question often asked in the novel: what does it mean to be Native Americans in urban America?

Libby: This question of self-image recurs in There There. The characters often catch sight of their reflections – such as Tony Lone-man in a TV screen or Dene Oxendene in the scuffed window of a BART train car.

Through their reflections, the characters confront their own images and the way they relate to their present environment. Orange writes, Native Americans, “…ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. Being Indian has never been about re- turning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.”

Juan: As the story continues, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield tells Orvil about Native American heritage:

“…Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it precious. You’re Indian because you’re Indian be- cause you’re Indian…”

Each character experiences his or her identity differently. A character named

Blue’s perspective was created after being estranged from Native American culture:

“I knew I wasn’t white. But not all the way. Because while my hair is dark and my skin is brown, when I look in the mirror, I see myself from the inside out. And inside I feel as white as the long while pill-shaped throw pillow my mom always made me keep on my bed even thought I never used it.”

Libby: The novel builds to a powwow at the Oakland Coliseum – an event that brings all the storylines and characters of the novel finally into common space and time—a crescendo.

Juan: Just before the pow-wow begins, Orange delivers Orvil Red Feather’s perspective as to who he wants to be:

“Orvil looks around the room, and he sees all these men dressed up like him. They all needed to dress up to look Indian too. There’s something like the shaking of feathers he felt somewhere between his heart and his stomach.”

But, the quote that captures the spirit of the book for me:

“When you see the bubbles on the side of your grand- mother’s face you’ll know that you don’t have to struggle to find the hero, the hero has found you — ‘they’re, there’ in the kitchen of your home.”

There There is about the banality of daily life and moments that change everything and it demands to be read once, twice and then again.

East Oakland Times publisher Tio MacDonald

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Duane Miles & Tio MacDonald

Many people in the San Quentin writing community are familiar with East Oakland Times and its publisher, Tio MacDonald. Dime after dime goes to his Global Tel Link account to keep in tele-phone contact with the more than 120 people in his literary group of incarcerated people all over the state.

A few months ago, I got my hands on one of his publications, Learning Curve, by Death Row inmate Johnny Duane Miles. The story was powerful, but it was the pref- ace really caught my attention.

JH: In the Introduction of Learning Curve, you said that you correspond with around 120 inmates. How do you manage that?

TM: The East Oakland Times is a full-time endeavor.

I accept calls from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. In 2018, I spent over 740 hours on the phone with incarcerated people. The only way I could imagine creating liter- ary works beneficial for both citizens and inmates was to be fully available to the people willing to work with me.

Many people call just to talk. Death Row inmates have a profound need for relationships outside of prison. My work is a balance between an act of compassion for individuals and a concentrated effort to develop writings of literary and public merit.

JH: What have you learned about taking risks in telling the stories of incarcerated people?

TM: I believe that, as people, it is in taking risks that we move forward. By risk, I mean anything done for the sake of others’ happiness or well-being, because, the most important lesson from my interactions with incarcerated people includes writing, phone calls, and visits to now over 25 people, is to take risk. The East Oakland Times is a type of Northern California built in a garage production. The currency at this point that keeps the lights on is the relationships I have formed with people, primarily incarcerated people. The risk I took to write my student and then to reach out to people at SanQuentin and other prisons has been for me a verification of the adage that it is better to give than receive. I understand that all people have needs, and here in California we also have wants, but life ultimately is in considerable proportion about how we treat and respect others.

JH: Why are you interested in the stories of incarcerated people?

TM: I pursued my correspondence with the incarcerated knowing two things, the reputation of present-day San Quentin as a rehabilitation- focused penal institution that heavily emphasizes the liberal and creative arts and that I wanted to create a publication with incarcerated writers. I had never interacted with persons in prison before reaching out to a student of mine, who is im- prisoned with a life sentence. Through correspondence, I began to meet the incarcerated people with whom I would produce a collection of uplifting stories for the people of East Oakland. The work was called Rehabilitation and has been distributed by hand, without cost to the recipients, to over 200 people on the streets of East Oakland.

After Rehabilitation, a few dedicated incarcerated ghostwriters and I developed the My Crime Series, which is a collection of biographies on the incarcerated. These stories are meant to candidly communicate the upbringing, life experience, character and motivations of the incarcerated in order to grant the broader public an understanding of the men and women in California prisons.

In my interactions with the incarcerated, I came to learn of the life experiences of men and
women in prison. I was shocked to hear of the abuses, influences, temptations and life experiences of many incarcerated people. TheMy Crime series is meant to produce empathy for the sake of California citizens’ better under- standing and better evaluation of who the incarcerated are and why each is in prison. The My Crime series accomplishes several goods in that the stories shed light on the mitigating factors contributing to crime in California and the subjects telling their stories gain a sense of giving back.

JH: What is public’s interest in stories from incarcerated people?

TM: The reviews on the My Crime series as well as Learning Curve, have been favorable. Looking at the incredible impact of the pod cast, Ear Hustle has had is encouraging. I aim to create 20 My Crime series books so a wide range of life experiences can be brought to public attention.

East Oakland Times, LLC     

 P.O. Box 11572

Oakland, CA 94611

Website: www.inmatesmatter.com

Kevin D. Sawyer Honorary Award from PEN America

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BOOK REVIEW

San Quentin News staffer, Kevin D. Sawyer received an honorable mention by PEN America. Out of thousands of submission annually, it’s a big deal in the prison literary world.

JH: What does getting an honorable mention by PEN America mean to you?

KDS: PEN America’s honorable mention raises my creative writing profile to a national level, in addition to the same type of recognition I’ve received for writing as a journalist through the Society of Professional Journalists and receiving The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. It’s always encouraging to receive recognition. It means I’m probably doing something right.

JH: What inspired Triple Sessions?

KDS: The start of football season always makes me look back at the years I played high school football. I was reading a couple books about football a few years ago and they made me recall the science behind the game. It made me think about the days in the summer when we practiced three times a day. It was like boot camp, but there was so much more involved. Only a boy who’s played multiple seasons of high school football can understand what it was to have been a member on a football team and all it took to be a part of that team. It’s like solider who goes through basic training and combat, you’ll always remember that—hopefully more good than bad. But, in the end, it was never about the sport, it was about the life lesson of teamwork.

JH: How does the inspiration for the story fit into how you see yourself today as opposed to then?

KDS: I realize even more today how important it is to be a team player— because none of us are in this world alone, because we’re interdependent on each other.

JH: Talk about the patriarchal perspective in that boys don’t cry — specifically when you broke your finger and you didn’t quit or tell anyone so that you could stay on the field.

KDS: It was part of the thinking of that time, and it’s probably still the thinking today. Boys are generally taught by men to be tough. Tears were a sign of weakness was the underlying message. But that was part of the psychology coaches used to keep us focused on what was important, and that was the team and the game. It’s why I tried to push through practice with a shattered finger. But as a man more than 40 years removed from that experience, it’s easier to understand why it was necessary to condition young men to operate that way. But it wasn’t about weakness or the game, none of that. It was about life. That’s what we were preparing for.

JH: Talk about violence being part of the game.

KDS: People tend to put violence in one bucket, like it’s all negative. Sometimes we fail to look at violence as part of American football, wrestling, MMA, basketball being a contact sport, even soccer or rugby, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing, as long as it’s controlled. When you can control your violence like in sports, that’s the ultimate self-control. Somewhere in the story, I wrote that violence in football has to be tempered with discipline. In a way, it makes sense because we’re all animals, but as men we have the ability to think at a higher level. Because of that, we can change our behavior. A lot of people don’t learn that, but that’s what a good coach teaches. They also teach us to not quit. Never. No matter what. Even if the score is 44 to nothing, we’re taught to play hard the full game. Vince Lombardi once said, “I never lost a football game, I just ran out of time.”

JH: Talk about three of your writings that best describe your style.

KDS: My writings pose the classic “Man verses State” scenario, sort of Kafkaesque. I try to push people to think, generally from a political perspective. In my creative writing class, I’ve also written The Award Winner’s Idiom and Power Distribution. Both deal with men facing state- sanctioned psychological and physical violence. My characters try to slow the state’s gradual march toward totalitarianism. That’s what all the movements are about today. If someone doesn’t come away with something profound to think about from my characters’ point of view, what’s the point in writing?

JH: Do you know what story you’re going to submit to PEN this year?

KDS: I’m thinking of submitting a memoir-based story my sister encouraged me to write about the struggle of two African-Americans earning their college degree. That’s a recurring theme in our community, but it’s an important subject when you consider our history in this country.

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