Imprisoned voices set free

A writer coaxes female inmates to tell their life stories. The result is gripping, articulate prose.

By TOM VALEO
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 28, 2003

Normally the cover of a book represents what's inside.

The cover of Couldn't Keep It to Myself, however, inspired what's inside.

The book, edited by Wally Lamb, consists of essays written by women who participated in a writing class he conducted at York Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Niantic, Conn.

In 1999, after two inmates committed suicide and several others tried, prison officials asked Lamb, who lives nearby, to speak to the inmates. Although somewhat of a celebrity after Oprah Winfrey selected his second novel, I Know This Much Is True, for her on-air book club, Lamb agreed to visit the prison one time, for 90 minutes. Thirty women, dressed identically in maroon T-shirts and jeans without pockets, showed up for his talk. They knew he had appeared on Oprah, and they wanted to hear his answer to the inevitable question, "What's Oprah like?"

Lamb, who had spent the previous 27 years teaching writing to high school and college students, attempted some writing exercises with the women, and at the end of the session they asked him to return. He said he would, but only if they would write something for him. "Two pages, minimum," he insisted. Fifteen of the original 30 showed up for the next session, but most were reluctant to share their stories. Diane Bartholomew -- at 54 the oldest member of the group -- had even made Lamb promise he would never read her work out loud.

But during the third session, Bartholomew raised her hand.

"In a soft, tentative voice, she began a disjointed three-page chronicle of her horrific life story," Lamb writes in the introduction to the book. "Incest, savage abuse, spousal homicide, lawyerly indifference and parallel battles against breast cancer and the dark depression that often accompanies long-term incarceration and shuts down hope. When Diane stopped reading, there was silence. Then, applause. The dam of distrust had been sledgehammered. The women's writing began to flow."

Each week after Lamb's class the women would move to another room to attend an art appreciation class taught by Pedro Valentin, a teacher from Three Rivers Community College in Norwich. To give them some experience at creating art, Valentin cut a picture of the Mona Lisa into 16 squares and held a lottery so each woman would "win" a square. Then he told them to take their square back to their cell and create their own interpretation of it.

What he didn't understand was that in prison, art supplies -- like almost everything else -- are considered contraband. A sharp pencil, after all, could make a formidable weapon.

Undeterred, the women carried out their assignment with eggshells, coffee grounds, instant creamer, instant coffee, toothpaste, grass clippings, acorns, lipstick, glitter, stamps and pictures from magazines (ripped out, of course, since prisoners can't have scissors).

By the third class, when they brought in their finished squares and assembled their Mona Lisa, they were exhilarated by the result. "The art project had given each one an opportunity to be creative individually, and to work together," Valentin said. "It brought a lot of togetherness to the class."

Valentin brought a camera, but after taking one picture of their Mona Lisa, the women informed him that a camera is considered contraband, too.

"So the picture on the cover is the only picture ever taken of the finished work," Valentin said. "After that, it was disassembled and they each took their own piece back." Valentin made a print of his photograph for each woman, and Lamb told them how much he admired the image.

"If we ever turned your stories into a book, this would be the perfect cover," he said.

"Hey," shouted class member Dale Griffith, "why don't we make a book?"

Coincidentally, Lamb had already received an advance from his publisher for a book in 2004, but all he had was a "recurring image in my head of an empty prison cell with the door swung open." He also had a title plucked from a gospel song: "Said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself, what the Lord has done for me."

The image, suggesting flight from oppressive confinement, coupled with that song lyric, which seemed to capture the women's compulsion to share their stories, inspired Lamb to help the women prepare their memoirs for publication. The result is a collection of anguished, articulate memoirs that chronicle lives gone wrong, but also celebrate the triumph of hope over despair. Their disparate voices, in Lamb's opinion, are well-represented by the cover image that inspired the project.

"The assemblage -- simultaneously fractured and united, chaotic and ordered -- struck me immediately as a metaphor for our group," Lamb said.

-Tom Valeo is a Times correspondent.

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