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ABSTRACT:
Although much has been written recently about prison "writing" in general (Wally Lamb's Couldn't Keep It to Myself, Mark Salzman's True Notebooks), far less has been written about the efforts and challenges involved in helping prisoners. In this case, females in a maximum-security prison in Westchester County, New York, learn the kind of writing skills required to succeed in college. While the inmate-students' writing skills in the pre-college program are similar to those of basic writers on the "outside," the students' lack of confidence in their ability and their belief that they are not "worthy" of a college education often present challenges (and rewards) that I begin to examine in this article.
When I was asked in 1997 to teach a basic writing course to the female inmates at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, New York, I knew a lot about teaching writing, but I knew absolutely nothing about prisons, prisoners, their need for post- secondary education, or the way their past personal and educational experiences would impact on their ability to succeed in college.
Now, I sometimes think I know far too much: about the conditions that contributed to the circumstances that brought many of the women to prison in the first place; about the pain and angst they suffer upon being separated from their families, particularly their children; about the poor (or nonexistent) educations they received before arriving at prison; about the inequality of sentencing based on race and class; about the diseases that ravage these women and their families as a result of poverty; about the way that drugs can destroy two, even three generations of the same family; about the way many people in society view these prisoners ("Aren't you afraid of them?" is the question I am most often asked about my work); about the way that politicians support harsh sentencing to win public approval, from the draconian but ineffectual Rockefeller drug laws to the decisions handed down day after day by parole boards, keeping even non-violent offenders behind bars until they "max" out; about the fact that Pell and TAP grants for prisoners were withdrawn in 1995 in order to save the taxpayers' money, despite the fact that the amount being spent on post- secondary...