SAN DIEGO — PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Programs, in conjunction with Haymarket Books, created a podcast featuring the literary and visual arts of prison inmates currently doing time. The virtual presentation included the music of Kenyatta Emmanuel, himself an ex-con, whose work has been heard from Sing Sing to Carnegie Hall.
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, who describes herself as an author, playwright and civil rights attorney in that order, makes a passionate appeal for more of the arts to effect the necessary changes in society, to hold up the mirror and challenge us to genuinely pursue justice.
The visual artwork was highly evocative, not just of pain and loneliness but also of humor and hope. One image showed a sad little boy, naked and vulnerable, putting together a puzzle image of himself with some of the pieces still missing. There were images of tropical beaches and loved ones dearly missed. I noticed homages to Diego Rivera, Vincent Van Gogh and René Magritte.
Time is a short play by a female inmate Ashley Starling Thomas depicting the interaction between cellmates. The newbie, Kayla is a young white woman who got four months for illegally trafficking immigrants across the border. Explaining in jaded terms how the system works is Kai, a black woman who got forty-five years for “conspiracy to traffic crack.” Note that she was not found guilty of actually selling it, but of being the girlfriend of the dealer.
My dear friend and San Diego native Amanda Miller read from the diary of a pregnant mother to her baby. She writes about her experiences of being a pregnant inmate and giving birth, squeezing all of her hopes and fears into a handful of pages. This notebook is all that the young woman has of her mother.
While many of us complain that we “feel like prisoners in our own homes” because we can’t live our normal lives, we are still in our own homes. We’re not prisoners and probably never will be. We’ll never really know how prisoners feel. But we can listen with compassion to those who are.
“For He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from Heaven did Adonai behold the Earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death.” (Psalm 120: 19-20, Hebrew Bible)
To learn more about this project, see the artwork and hear the stories, visit www.pen.org/worksofjustice.
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Eric Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com