Let's Talk About It 'Inside'

Prison populations do not resemble the usual library reading and discussion group audience. Yet many prisoners are enthusiastic readers. Some have a favorite genre or style of books - New Age science fiction, war stories, even detective novels. Many are skilled and exuberant storytellers themselves, although sometimes less adept at being listeners. Often they become intensely interested in a story without any awareness of the bigger picture that story represents, or how it might mirror their own lives.

These generalizations - based on the experience of the Maine Humanities Council's Let's Talk About It and New Books, New Readers facilitators working in correctional institutions since 1993 - led the Council to consider a new approach for a reading program on the "inside".

The Council will be experimenting with this new approach over the next year, thanks to a grant from the Maine Community Foundation, to expand Let's Talk About It specifically for prisoners, and from the Frances Hollis Brain Foundation to buy the necessary books. The program will be running this fall in the Bolduc Correctional Facility, the Maine State Prison in Warren, the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, and the Central Maine Pre-Release Center in Hallowell.

"The single most difficult issue for those who have run afoul of the law is their relationship with the community" says Julia Walkling, who directs the Council's New Books, New Readers program and its Stories for Life program for probationers. "Community" in this sense can include families, friends, co-workers, towns, or regions.

Moreover, inmates often do not believe they have the capacity for individual choice or effective control over their lives "outside." They often feel that things are preordained to turn out the way they do (usually badly). "Books that deal with individual choice often seem to baffle or perplex them because they perceive of themselves as either completely dependent or fiercely independent," says Jeff Aronson, a Council scholar with experience leading humanities programs at every level.

Aronson was one of the eight members of the advisory committee that met over the past year to examine relevant books and choose high-quality works of fiction that consider the consequences of how an individual responds to a community's demands and possibilities.

Provisionally entitled "Who Am I? Where Am I? Self and Community," the two new series will include titles that will resonate with Mainers, including Richard Russo's Empire Falls and Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. Other titles transport the theme to other times and places - medieval England in Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, traditional Africa in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and modern working-class Dublin in Roddy Doyle's The Commitments. Three classics are included - Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Scarlet Letter.

The committee also chose two books of short stories, in hopes of attracting reluctant readers - Climbing the God Tree, a novel in the form of short stories by Maine author Jaimee Wriston Colbert, and Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, an award-winning anthology.

The new series will also be incorporated into Let's Talk About It public reading and discussion programs around the state.

The View from the East

Maine Humanities Council teacher professional development programs do not end when the participants part company They live on in the classroom and elsewhere - in Craig Blanchard's case, even in Jinhua, China. Blanchard, who teaches social studies at Oxford Hills comprehensive High School, attended the 2000 session of Views of the East: China and Japan in Maine Schools. Designed to encourage teaching about East Asia, the program is a partnership with the World Affairs Council of Maine, administered by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies with funding from the Freeman Foundation.

Blanchard persuaded the Foundation to fund the ultimate in field trips: in April he took 12 students and two other teachers to China for 16 days. In Jinhua they spent four days with Chinese families and visited the high school seen here. Oxford Hills is now planning an exchange program with the Zhejiang Normal University Middle School in Jinhua for both students and teachers.

Front, left to right: Nora Davis, Catherine Strauss, Nicolette Howell, Sarah Morrison, Barbara Robertson. Back Row: Craig Blanchard (group leader), Joseph Rolfe, Kyle Courcy, Brandon Pullen, Chase Bruch, Kara Bonney, Chris Allen, Wendy Simpson (teacher), Richard Bourgeois, and Chris Cobbett (teacher).