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Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs From Jail ed. by David Coogan

2016; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/clj.2016.0007

2162-6324

Maria Aparecida Conti,

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

Reviewed by: Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs From Jail ed. by David Coogan Maria Conti Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs From Jail Edited by David Coogan Richmond: Brandylane P, 2016. 243pp. [Life is] about discovering the beauty that lies dormant inside of your fellow human beings. It’s about giving love and then receiving it . . . . When you look at me, you won’t see any of the above, at least not on the outside of who I appear to be. But x-ray me with your mind. Listen to my words. Look into my eyes. Here, let me help you. You’ll need a light, because it’s dark in my world . . . . You’ll see the prison inside me (191). —Stan, writing workshop participant Prison writing program facilitators Wendy Wolters Hinshaw and Tobi Jacobi explain that while the public is inundated with fictional depictions of incarcerated people, we are not often able to hear from them directly (“What Words” 68). David Coogan’s Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail offers readers this rare opportunity. As creative nonfiction, the majority of the book is comprised of the intimate reflections of ten incarcerated writers. The epigraph above is a microcosm of the raw, honest exploration of self that echoes throughout the piece. What makes the work even more insightful for both instructors in carceral settings and writing teachers is that Coogan includes his own memoir of teaching at the Richmond City Jail.1 He begins each chapter with a first-person account of what he is thinking at different stages in the project. Rich in dialogue from the workshop and Coogan’s inner monologue, these interludes provide context for the stories to come. A scholar of rhetoric as social change whose work is familiar to many CLJ readers, Coogan makes a connection between this book and community-engaged research and praxis. Notably, he frames the project with Michael Warner’s theory of the counterpublic, a term originally coined by Nancy Fraser. Counterpublics provide discursive space for people excluded from the dominant power structure of the [End Page 71] mainstream public sphere. Coogan asks, “Given that prisoners have been effectively sidelined from public life by their incarceration, how are we to hear their voices—that sound of their citizen-selves becoming?” (2). Indeed, incarcerated people usually have restricted access to online participation in the public sphere that would enable this exercise of citizenship. A central feature of Coogan’s epistemological stance is his belief that grassroots projects can affect publics in meaningful ways, “ris[ing] like beanstalks into the hard-to-reach public spheres of empathy, insight, and inclusiveness that were typically obscured by all of the rants, ignorance, and stale air below” (11). In other words, projects emerging from the ground up have the potential to transcend the empty, unproductive rhetoric often present in discussions about incarceration. The hope of the writing class was “that each man might understand the story of his life, and in so doing, change its course” (xi). Despite his grand vision, the book does not indulge in the self-congratulatory rhetoric of ‘this-is-what-I-did-look-how-great-it-is.’ Rather, Coogan honestly communicates the unique frustrations and administrative stumbling blocks that come with teaching in a jail. At times, he questioned whether the workshop would be able to continue due to the sudden transfer of participants to other facilities. The first eleven chapters take place during the workshop’s first year at the Richmond City Jail. Because many of the original participants were transferred, the project continued via letters. The final eight chapters follow the men in prison and their lives afterwards, between 2008 and 2011. Chapter 1, “A World You Used to Live In,” details the first meeting at the jail. Coogan delineates four categories that will serve as the “narrative arc” of each man’s story: the past (people from your childhood, your neighborhood), the problem (when you started to get into trouble), the punishment (facts of your crime(s), your emotional reaction), and the possibilities (ambitions for the future, what you can offer others) (10–11). Many of the stories blend into each other across individual lives as they discuss...