Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing

"Doing Time," For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide. Bell Chevigny, a writer herself and a former prison teacher, has selected the best of these to create Doing Time - a timely, beautiful, sometimes devastating, but vital work, which demonstrates resoundingly that prison writing is a vibrant branch of American literature.

Since 1973, PEN has sponsored an annual literary competition for prisoners. This anthology, selected from roughly 1700 submissions, showcases efforts that range widely in form, subject matter and quality. In a foreword, Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame touches on some of the questions readers will have: "Watch for the self-serving subtext. When your heart is moved, can you trust it? When you feel for the writers of these words, are you being had?" The book is broken into thematic sections such as "Initiation," "Time and Its Terms," "Family" and "Death Row." Though Chevigny made an attempt to include more women writers, women make up only 7% of the prison population, so the collection is overwhelmingly male. Anthony LaBaarca Falcone's poem, "A Stranger," uses circus imagery to mourn the daughter's childhood he missed. David Wood's eerily memorable story, "Feathers on the Solar Wind," is a searing portrait in which AIDS prods a man to accept personal and spiritual responsibility. Not surprisingly, most of these stories, poems and essays lack polish. But even some of the roughest pieces are driven by an emotional power that gives the sense of spending time with people who are composing not just for pleasure but for high stakesAthe definition of a self, the confronting of personal demons, even redemption.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This anthology of material by winners of PEN Americas annual prison writing contests provides a polyphonic chorus of rejoinder to our policies of maximum incarceration. The collections prose is honed and direct, with many contributors striking a hypnotic balance between the urgency inherent in writing as survival and the punishingly absurd nature of their circumstances: though their literary imaginations range widely, bodily, theyre going no place. Most at issue is the individual readers openness toward otherwise shunned figures. Several pieces are from longtime death-row inmates, presenting lucid, provocative narratives that dont excuse their youthful brutality. A thick sheaf of entries represent the hapless POWs of the Drug War (often disadvantaged women), serving long sentences for semantic and violence-free crimes. The distribution of fiction, poetry, and essays into 11 topical sections (e.g. Players, Games) allows a textured diversity of excellent pieces, such as Paul Mulryans scorching account of the 11-day Lucasville, Ohio, riot; Jimmy Santiago Bacas poetic reach toward lost family; Dax Xenoss O. Henry-winning fiction, Death of a Duke; and Robert Moriartys droll, harrowing memoir, Pilots in the War on Drugs. Introductory essays by Dead Man Walking author Sister Helen Prejean and SUNY Purchase professor emeritus Chevigny provide a moral chassis; the latters piece charts the prison writing movement as a response to the fluctuations of penal theory between reform and retribution, offering a chilling vision of our current maximum-time, hard-labor model as a machine of social control, devouring ever more persons of color and of the underclass even as the crime rate declines. Essential reading for those concerned by this imbalanceand it should be more than essential for lawmakers and citizens who support the hard bargain of liberty for order without considering the darkness created. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Prisoners have always writtenAon the walls of their cells, in journals, or on chits smuggled out by visitorsAbut their efforts have usually gone unnoticed. PEN is unique in that over the last 25 years it has collected and published short stories, poems, and essays written by prisoners across the country. This volume reprints the best of the lot. A few names are familiar, such as former Black Panther Kathy Boudin, but most are unknown. Not of first quality, but certainly of high amateur ranking, these works speak of the monotony of incarceration, the loss of outside contacts, and the longing for freedom. In her introduction, editor Chevigny (literature, SUNY at Purchase) discusses the changing face of prisons she has seen over the years and the therapeutic value of prison writing. The best selling point of this volume, however, is that, in a palatable way, it gives the reader a view of what it is like to be inside this strange and ominous world. Highly recommended.AFrances O. Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.