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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
emotional
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I liked this book more than I initially thought I would, and I ended up caring for the kids that it's about. Mark Salzman spent some time teaching a writing class in a jail for juveniles accused of committing violent crimes. The vast majority of the teens were incarcerated for murder and were serving time until they were tried and then moved to adult facilities to serve their sentences. The quality of the writing these "students" were capable of was often surprising. It's so easy to think of violent youth as worthless garbage but this book did a good job of showing another side of these kids. I actually felt sorry for many of them and had to remind myself to also feel sad for their victims and the victims' families.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Really excellent! 2020 is off to a good start with this fascinating book. I have been an admirer of Mark Salzman's writing for many years, and this one didn't disappoint.
In this book, Salzman tells the story of a writing group he started at a juvenile detention facility in LA. I admit I wasn't super excited to read this book club choice - while it sounded interested, this is the kind of topic where it's easy to get a bit too hokey or glib. I shouldn't have worried. Salzman is up front about his own reactions and emotions, and portrays the inmates he worked with fairly (or at least it seems to - obviously I can't say for sure one way or another). There's not much talk about their crimes or sentences, as that's not the focus of the book. Instead we read a lot of their original writing. The book moves quickly - I was drawn in almost immediately. Definitely worth picking up if you're at all curious.
"The voice no one hears is the voice that yells out for freedom in the mind of a forbidden child."
"Go ahead, get it out of your system now. Because before this hour is through you'll be dazzled by my articulations, stung by my insinuations, envious of my rhymes, and forgettin' your hard times. Ask me to write straight, I'll write twisted. You think you got my number? It ain't listed. I'm an original mind, a face unlined, a close encounter of the criminal kind."
"Go ahead, get it out of your system now. Because before this hour is through you'll be dazzled by my articulations, stung by my insinuations, envious of my rhymes, and forgettin' your hard times. Ask me to write straight, I'll write twisted. You think you got my number? It ain't listed. I'm an original mind, a face unlined, a close encounter of the criminal kind."
I got a certain...feeling from the beginning of this book that left a bad taste in my mouth throughout the first third or half. I get that the author wanted to give a sense of how out of his element he felt when he first visited the inmates at the juvenile prison, but I got the sense that what he felt when he first encountered them and saw their writing was something like, "Wow, in addition to being violent criminals, these inmates are also *people* who can *write*!" So that grossed me out a little and like I said, that negative first impression stayed with me for a while.
That said, I definitely felt better about the second half of the book. I appreciated the honest presentation of the way the justice system was handling these boys' cases, and the way certain characters dropped out of the story entirely when they were moved to a different prison, without trying to sugar coat the fact that their ties with prior friends and teacher had been effectively severed, possibly forever. I thought the characters themselves were well captured (though hard to know how accurately, given that this is non-fiction drawn from the author's memory), and I appreciated the amount of space given to hear directly from the boys and read their writing. The book was, for better or worse, very successful at leading me to separate the inmates identities as characters and writers from their identities as prisoners who were incarcerated for murder.
That said, I definitely felt better about the second half of the book. I appreciated the honest presentation of the way the justice system was handling these boys' cases, and the way certain characters dropped out of the story entirely when they were moved to a different prison, without trying to sugar coat the fact that their ties with prior friends and teacher had been effectively severed, possibly forever. I thought the characters themselves were well captured (though hard to know how accurately, given that this is non-fiction drawn from the author's memory), and I appreciated the amount of space given to hear directly from the boys and read their writing. The book was, for better or worse, very successful at leading me to separate the inmates identities as characters and writers from their identities as prisoners who were incarcerated for murder.
As a teacher, this book opened my mind and helped me to remember that all of my students come with a background. It was a good book and eye opening to hear about what it's like in prison for minors.