Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Monday, April 24, 2006
Wally Lamb And His Flock
On Sunday afternoon, Wally Lamb came to an auditorium in Deep River. He brought with him two of the 11 co-authors of Couldn't Keep It To Myself, the collection of memoirs that stirred all the trouble at the highest levels of Connecticut government a couple of years ago.I have known Wally for more than 20 years, since he submitted his first piece of fiction to me when I edited Northeast magazine at the Hartford Courant. Like everyone who knows him, I celebrated his subsequent great success as a novelist (She's Come Undone and This Much I Know Is True) -- for once, the phrase "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy" really applied.
Even the inmates at York Correctional Facility -- women who committed felonies ranging from fraud to murder, and who enrolled in Wally's memoir class -- found him so. When I did a piece about Nancy Whitely, one of the authors of Couldn't Keep It To Myself, she told me, "You knew instantly that Wally would nothing to hurt you."
In his remarks in Deep River, Wally recalled the outrageous reaction of the state Department of Corrections to what happened at York. After working with the inmates, Wally decided that their memoirs could be collected into a compelling book. Harper Collins agreed, and in 2003, Couldn't Keep It To Myself was published. Each writer was given a $5,600 advance, small in the publishing world, but huge to them. And to the State of Connecticut, which sued the women. It wanted not only the money they were paid but reimbursement, under a rarely enforced law, for the costs the state incurred for incarcerating them -- $117 for every day they were under lock and key.
It was ridiculous. The state was punishing prisoners for learning a skill that could help them when they got out. Many observors (I was one of them) thought part of the state's motivation was that the book contained criticism of York and its policies. After an anti-state onslaught in the press, the DOC backed away from its demands.
And yet, as Wally pointed out yesterday, ironies abound. For one: Many of the inmates are now free, and leading productive lives. The governor of Connecticut, who supported the action against the inmates, became an inmate himself. The head of the DOC at the time went on to a position at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In the program yesterday, two former inmates read work by them and others. Brenda Medina said her greatest challenge after getting out of prison was technology. She didn't know what an ATM was. And she confided that she was startled just before she came on stage in Deep River when the toilet in the women's room flushed automatically.
Robin Cullen said she was startled when she first went to York. She had assumed that a prison wouldn't kick people while they were down. But it was clear to her that York wasn't interested a the time in rehabilitation (a position that has changed).
Wally, it would seem from the evidence, has started a new prison industry: Memoir. And poetry and fiction and art and dance (taught by others, and inspired by Wally and by Dale Griffith, who co-taught the memoir workshops).
We shouldn't, of course, forget the victims of the crimes of these inmates. But it seems a reasonable idea that it is possible for people to emerge from prison with the tools and motivation to become productive citizens.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 8:20 AM
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