#prisonwriting

by Dylan Pyles

The population of Vandalia, Missouri is 3,899, counting the two thousand or so prisoners living at the Women’s Eastern correctional facility. The town’s lone Chinese restaurant serves the best Crab Rangoon You’ve Ever Eaten. It seems unbelievable, because it is the best. I was introduced to the Myth of the Rangoon on the drive down. The head of the church ministry program, who had arranged for me to teach a one-day workshop in creative writing, said she hoped I like Chinese. As I signed in and we passed through security, it seemed like everyone mentioned the Crab Rangoon, as if it had become a natural component of the atmosphere. I could devote quite a few words to the Rangoon, but perhaps they’re best saved for another day. In short: I was not disappointed. But while indulging, I became aware of an absence—the absence of Crab Rangoon in the lives of my students for the day. The miracle of the best Crab Rangoon You’ve Ever Eaten belongs to an off-limits world just a few miles down the road.

Much like my freshman composition students, the fifty incarcerated women sitting in front of me at the correctional facility were required to be there. Clear plastic cups of instant coffee sat on their desks next to notebooks and pencils. No one in the room knew what to expect, myself included. Someone volunteered to distribute the reading packet I had put together for the workshop, and I second-guessed my selections for the hundredth time that morning. Too complicated? Boring? Triggering in any way? I introduced myself and realized that I had the attention of the entire room. I read Anne Lamott and asked them to look at things like they were looking at them for the first time. They were interested in the opportunity.

When I asked for volunteers to share their list of things they were grateful for, more hands appeared than time would allow. All voices hushed in preparation for each reader, and all eyes watched as the reader’s face illuminated, typically when she was halfway down the page and realized that what she had written was, in fact, a poem.

After the group read a short, intense essay by Joy Castro, I was faced with my first defiance of the day: someone in the back, who hadn’t yet spoken, disagreed with my particular interpretation. “Where are you getting that from?” she asked, and immediately offered her own assessment, which revealed a layer I hadn’t reached in the piece. Maybe she was even more interested than I was.

I had feared that they simply wouldn’t write. I had signed on for four hours of this. What would I do if they wouldn’t write? But each prompt produced better results than the one before, and my initial fear became a joke to me.

After being prompted to churn out a one-page short story in which the main character is keeping a secret, one inmate stood up and shared a brief narrative about building a snowman piece by piece on smoke break, careful to keep her new friend hidden from the guards who might destroy him. She used pebbles for a mouth, old cigarette butts for eyes. Initial laughter gave way to contemplation: what did it mean to create something of your own in a state of constant surveillance?

It made me think about the spaces where I create. In the academic workshop, it’s easy to sideline the practical purposes of creative expression. I confess: I’ve often entertained the thought that maybe creative writing isn’t for everyone. But what I learned that day—what I recovered from a younger, more trusting part of me—is that it is for everyone, and for every place. It has to be, or it isn’t anything at all.

When we came back from the Chinese restaurant, a young inmate talked with us excitedly about the food visit she had coming up in a week. She had been counting down the days. She asked our input on what her family should bring her, and we all agreed that no matter what, they should stop for Crab Rangoon.

After lunch break, I asked my class to write about something interesting that happened in the dining hall. There were especially tasty peanut butter bars that day, an unexpected reprieve, and in that way, they were sort of like me.