No Suns Today

Bookman's was out of Sun Magazines, so I went with dictionaries, A Course in Miracles, Emmanuel's Book, and a book on creative non-fiction. Some of the guards thought Miracles was a bible.

I have to confess, I felt a little odd carrying woo woo stuff into the prison, like I am some sort of New-Age evangelist or something.

But on the other hand, I felt good bringing in books that the inmates had requested, was helping them along in their reading and writing. Some of the guys have gone deep into reading. One guy is reading Chaucer because he thinks he should know the canon of English literature. Chaucer in the pen... Another man wants to study journalism. More are taking correspondence courses in composition.

One inmate asked me for a book to help him "talk like you guys" about writing. He wanted "the words to explain" the type of writing, and some of the strategies to compose that, in the workshop.

Many of them carry a belief that knowledge about writing has to come from books, that writers have to take the path of the academy, that writers are elite, formally educated, and somehow "better" or "different" from them.

They don't see their experience as a valid source of content for their writing, or their voices as appropriate for telling their stories. They want to go out rather than in.

Of course, the path to good writing goes into good books as much as it goes into one's life experience, but it's hard to do both. One has to read and analyze as much as one has to reflect and own one's voice and experience. Writing is not an either/or proposition.

Still I am impressed and moved by the hunger the men feel for books, for guidance, for teaching.