Conviction
"The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."
— Virginia Woolf
Couldn't Keep It to Myself is an inside look at the women behind the bars of a maximum security Connecticut prison, incarcerated for crimes whose breadth spans larceny by embezzlement to homicide in the first degree to manslaughter due to emotional duress. The collection, consisting of eleven personal
narratives, illuminates the lives of these women - all
of them harsh, abusive, and lonely -- prior to
conviction. It is an attempt to explain rather than
excuse, to balance rather than blame. The book is
neither a tabloid tale of the injustices incurred upon
female prisoners nor a personal proclamation of
innocence. Rather, such vivid and intimate portrayals
remind us that these women are human beings first,
inmates second.
As each story reveals, the contributors were often
sexually, physically, and mentally abused; many came
from abject poverty and broken homes; some were faced
with unwanted pregnancies while still in their teens.
In the face of a harsh environment, low self-esteem,
self-destructive habits, obstreperous rage, and poor
decision-making they ended up where author Wally Lamb
found them -- jail. "As an adult, I have stolen and
paid the price," contributor Carolyn Ann Adams writes,
"As a child, I was stolen from, by a thief who went
free."
Lamb, well known for his Oprah-endorsed novels
She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is
True, apparently receives a multitude of
solicitations each year to speak at various events
around the country. In want of spending time with his
family and his writing, Lamb tends to politely refuse
such invitations, aided by a dismissive index card
taped to his phone. It just so happened that when York
Correctional Institution phoned several years ago,
Lamb was stranded without his handy dandy note card.
His strategy gone awry, Lamb found himself teaching a
creative writing seminar -- not to convicts, but
rather to women in search of identity, in search of
peace.
Lamb's first visit led to a three-year stint. So moved
by the inmates' words and the stories they crafted,
Lamb "couldn't keep it" to himself; he felt compelled
to compile and publish them.
"Long-term incarceration," Barbara Parsons Lane
writes, "is a strange mix of sadness, sameness, and
explosiveness." >From the disparaging cellblocks of
York, comes hope and humor. Over time, and over the
course of Lamb's instruction, each woman found her own
voice: the words come bitten off, often carrying the
salty taste of tears, the metallic tang of blood.
There is no melodrama in these stories, no "woe is
me." These are real women and they have real stories
to tell.
Nine of the eleven women wrote their pieces while
incarcerated. One of those, Diane Bartholomew, perhaps
the most poignant of all the women, died of cancer
while at York. The remaining two women are a cousin
of Lamb's, Nancy Birkla, and the York Correctional
Institution's writing teacher Dale Griffith.
Birkla, a recidivist cocaine addict, was once again
trying to break herself from the cycle when she was
convicted for drug trafficking in Kentucky in 1990.
Knowing that she would both pee clean and that it was
her first offense, she figured she'd be home by Oprah.
She wasn't. A judge decided to make an example out
of her, sentencing her to seven years for each of her
four trafficking charges. It appears that she is
included in the mix because Lamb has taken her on as a
"private" writing student and because she is related.
Dale Griffith's piece "Bad Girls" concludes the
personal narratives, exploring, or attempting to
explore, the role of teacher and all the peculiarities
and eye opening experiences that come upon teaching in
a prison. Dale's closing story, however, though
adding an additional perspective to the book feels
contrived and gratuitous. Lamb's presence feels the
same.
His observation that prison is "not fun" is not
exactly an investigative report. Indeed such a comment
is actually quite silly. "At York C.I. a woman is told
when to rise, what to wear, when to shower, when to
eat, when to use the phone, and when to go to bed,"
Lamb shrewdly observes. "Her mail can be read,
censored, or confiscated. An institutional lockdown
can abort her classes, her workday, or a planned visit
with her children." Well, duh. Welcome to a blatant
statement of the obvious.
In the end, a final question remains: Why does Wally
Lamb's name stick out on the cover? Within the book's
title, why is his name featured in the biggest font?
Why is his name featured at all? Lamb edited the book
and provided its rather inane preface, but his overly
abundant presence in the title seems to detract from
his alleged purpose -- the women of York. Lamb's
addition to and manipulation of the title comes off as
cheap, making the reader wonder if this is just
another way to channel more money into his own
pockets.
— 6 May 2003
