#caits meissner

[gatheringbones]

best books of 2022 rec list:

fiction:

chouette by claire oshetsky

forty thousand in gehenna by cj cherryh

fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom

sula by toni morrison

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin

jane eyre by charlotte bronte

villette by charlotte bronte

non-fiction:

gay spirit by mark thompson

we too: stories on sex work and survival by natalie west

transgender history by susan stryker

blood marriage wine & glitter by s bear bergman

love and rage: the path to liberation through anger by lama rod owens

gay soul by mark thompson

between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up in the AIDS crisis by mattilda bernstein sycamore

the man they wanted me to be: toxic masculinity and a crisis of our own making by jared yates sexton

nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity by mattilda bernstein sycamore

cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime by alex espinoza

gay body by mark thompson

what my bones know: a memoir of healing from complex trauma by stephanie foo

the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption by kathryn joyce

the opium wars: the addiction of one empire and the corruption of another by w. travis hanes III

a queer history of the united states by michael bronski

the trouble with white women by kyla schuller

what we don't talk about when we talk about fat by aubrey gordon

the feminist porn book by tristan taormino

administrations of lunacy: a story of racism and psychiatry at the midgeville asylum by mab segrest

the women's house of detention by hugh ryan

angela davis: an autobiography by angela davis

ten steps to nanette by hannah gadsby

neuroqueer heresies by nick walker

the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare by zena sharman

brilliant imperfection by eli clare

the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by david graeber and david wengrow

tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel

all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence by emily l. thuma

if this is a man by primo levi

bi any other name: bisexual people speak out by lorraine hutchins

white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson

public sex: the culture of radical sex by pat califa

I'm glad my mom died by jenette mccurdy

care of: letters, connections and cures by ivan coyote

the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman

skid road: on the frontier of health and homelessness in an american city, by josephine ensign

the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt

nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm by robin diangelo

corrections in ink by keri blakinger

sexed up: how society sexualizes us and how we can fight back by julia serano

smash the church, smash the state! the early years of gay liberation by tommi avicolli mecca

no more police: a case for abolition by mariame kaba

until we reckon: violence, mass incarceration, and a road to repair by danielle sered

the care we dream of: liberatory & transformative justice approaches to LGBTQ+ health by zena sharman

reclaiming two-spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal and sovereignty in native america by gregory d. smithers

the sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by Caits Meissner

[gatheringbones]

[“When I was finally given a pen after five months in solitary confinement in an Iranian prison, my world grew exponentially. Lying on my stomach on the carpeted floor of my cell, I wrote page after page after page, in very small script, so as not to waste space. The ability to mark words on a page took on a quality that I can only describe as magical—a nothingness replaced by a somethingness, a presence instead of absence—tangible proof that I existed outside of the fear and chaos of my own mind. I’d been ripped out of reality and thrown into a cell, where I couldn’t go to the bathroom or breathe fresh air without begging for permission. Where control of my body, my time, my future, and my rights had all been stolen from me. Where I hadn’t been given a single phone call, much less access to a lawyer. . . .

The question I began to ask myself on the page was, Do I still have choice? When a guard opened the door of my cell, for example, avoiding eye contact and placing a plastic container of food on the hallway floor for me to pick up instead of handing it to me, my body would flood with rage. Other times, at the first glimpse of a face in the crack of my cell door, I would begin sobbing, only to have the cell door shut in my face. I had never had my own emotions be so completely out of my control, and clearly hurting myself or making myself vulnerable to power-tripping guards didn’t serve me, but was it up to me how I reacted? Did “free will” exist in any meaningful way in a context where I was so highly triggered and frightened, or had my reactions become automatic? Without freedom, was there still an “I”? And if so, who was “I” responsible to?

I owed the guards nothing, that I felt certain of. They’d severed the human contract by participating in the illegal imprisonment of an innocent woman for their country’s political gain. Yet underneath the emotional mask worn by each guard was the face of a human being, and what I needed, more than anything else, was human contact. Here was the essence of conflict: What was more important, my mental health or my self-respect? Protecting myself from rejection and more emotional pain, or taking a risk that might lead to getting a little of what I needed to stay sane? I discovered I still had the ability to choose. And I chose to try to interact with the guards in a way that didn’t give away my power.

With every guard, that looked different. With Leila, I would speak Arabic and try and get her to teach me Farsi. With Maryam, I would act the fool (taking my shirt off, for example, and smelling my armpits). Stone-faced Nargess I would flatter in an attempt to get a smile (what beautiful eyes you have, woman!). With Mask Lady (she refused to tell me her name), I would take a warrior stance and stare her down menacingly with my legs spread and my hands on my hips until she eventually gave in and handed me my lunch.”]

Sarah Shourd, from On Dramatic Theater, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[gatheringbones]

[“Here’s the other important note about prison writing communities: they aren’t collective hallelujahs. Typically, they are competitive and cliquey and composed of people fragmented and fractured by the experience of incarceration. Put simply: plenty of our cohort almost can’t stand each other. But together we clarify and contextualize each other. We offer peer support, and greater than that, we are an alliance.

A woman asked me sincerely a while back why I believe I thought I should be able to write and create despite the dark things I had done earlier in this lifetime. I considered her question for a second and told her, because if I don’t believe in myself and in my right to expression, who should? If I don’t fight to make the things that I create, that matter to me, then who will fight for me? We can ask the same of each other. In these prisons, our value has always been in our backs rather than in our minds. It is necessary to join forces. When confronting barriers like walls and fences and all that shitty concrete a mile thick with archaic social norms and laws put forth out of fear—amplification makes a difference. Our voices become vibrations that can disrupt the impersonal representations of the value given to us on this earth. Our voices, our work, make us people again. If we don’t take care of each other, or cultivate each other’s talents, then who do we expect will?”]

Zeke Caligiuri, from On Building Prison Writing Communities, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[gatheringbones]

[“In my first book, a memoir of the eighteen years I was addicted to heroin and my inevitable decline through the dregs of society and eventually into crime, I wrote about a lot of very tough and painful times and events from my past. I’m not proud of a great portion of the memories that got me locked up. But in order to really write about them, I had to essentially relive them over again, and in doing so, I was plagued with a ton of remorse and guilt. The process of reexamining the past opened a mental floodgate, and the memories would suddenly appear one after another in Technicolor and Dolby sound, complete with all the anxiety, anger, resentments, and fear that the original events evoked. Some so vivid that I experienced panic attacks, gasping for air, my heart pounding. I would eventually learn from a psychiatrist at the rehab where I finally got clean that having these kinds of “waking dreams” was one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I was particularly haunted by a friend’s death back in 1994 in San Francisco. I had carried with me for years the idea that I could have somehow saved him if I hadn’t been using drugs, or at least had been present enough to notice he hadn’t been around. My friend’s health had not been good, he didn’t take care of himself, and like me, he used drugs. But the underlying real factor was my friend had died of a brain aneurysm due to a blood clot. And when I actually wrote this memory down, detailing all the facts, I was able to come to an understanding that there was nothing I could have done differently. I am not a doctor. My friend never confided in me how sick he actually was. And even more concretely, I don’t know if I was even in the building at the time of his death.

It wasn’t until I wrote the entire incident down on paper, examining the reality of what had actually happened, that I realized this was just the story I was telling myself. I don’t know why I was telling myself this story—possibly it was my way of coping with the loss of a friend. But really, that doesn’t matter. What is important is that after I did re-evaluate the actual truth, I came to a place of acceptance, and this incident no longer played in my mind’s repertoire of horrific memories.

Consequently, as I continued writing, I was able to revisit a majority of my difficult memories; only now I was able to look at them with a much different perspective. Before I had strong feelings about what had happened, but most of those feelings were either displaced or subject to unreal expectations and resentments—most of which I was placing on myself. Yet every time I actually wrote out a memory, I was able to get a better understanding of the event. A lot of times I was able to work my way through it and eventually put it to rest.”]

Patrick O’Neil, from On Nonfiction Memoir, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[gatheringbones]

[“The question about prisoners being writers first or prisoners first is really the wrong question. It is not an either/or situation. We are writers writing under extreme and extraordinary conditions that most people cannot begin to imagine. After all, that is the threat that prison represents: to keep those inside them out of sight and out of mind. The struggle to create inside of a living death is an enormously difficult and at times dangerous endeavor. In reading the writings of prisoners, we are looking in a mirror that reflects our shared humanity. We are not so different from the millions inside American prisons. Their relief is our relief; our freedom is limited by their imprisonment. To read, mentor, listen to, and embrace prisoners’ writing compels us to bear witness and brings us all closer to liberation.”]

Susan Rosenberg, from PEN Prison Writing: Then and Now, In and Out, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[gatheringbones]

[“Almost from my first few weeks, registering, discerning, and observing seemed to represent the only moral form of self-defense available to me, the only way to save the inner core of my decency before these portions were ripped away. And that’s really it, that’s all that has powered my career—such as it is—since. I’m not particularly talented, I’m not really special: I’m just highly motivated. I am, for want of a better word, haunted.

It’s certainly true that I’ve studied. It’s also true that I read a ton, and when I come across an essay or a novel that impacts me emotionally or intellectually, I work to deconstruct the text to try to get a view of its internal mechanics. But that’s all just method. If you don’t have a fire inside you raging to be released, you are never going to last in this game. You need to know this early on: becoming a prison writer, learning how to accurately speak truth to power and how to report from the depths of these little totalitarian fiefdoms embedded within the larger body politic, you are entering into a sort of reverse Faustian bargain. You may, if you stick with it long enough, find some regard in the eyes of posterity. In the meantime, the administration is going to seriously mess up your life. You will catch cases. You will attract the attention of the wardens. You may do time in seg for it, as I have. If you don’t have your motivations and expectations properly calibrated, you will flame out, exactly like most of the writers I’ve known over the years. If this isn’t a passion, if it’s not something you feel to be as necessary to survival as breathing, none of this will seem worth the trouble. And it won’t be.”]

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, from The Price of Remaining Human, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[gatheringbones]

[“For those who’ve never had to appear in front of a parole board, imagine being called for a job interview without being told the job you’re applying for, no job description, no indication of the skills or qualifications they’re looking for. Just go in there and sell yourself. The process is so arbitrary that most people who make parole can’t even say for sure what swayed the interview in their favor. It was fumbling around in the darkness. But did it have to be that way?

It was this questioning that pushed me to rethink the lessons I learned from writing. Wading in legal battles, I had drifted away from what poetry had taught me: to own the words I choose. For decades until that point, I had been searching to express myself in terms that I thought the parole board would want to hear, without command of how I actually expressed myself. I began to reexamine key words that the board would use in their denial explanations—like lack of remorse or lack of insight. Throughout my bid, I had certainly wrestled with these words. They had a living, breathing presence, and so I was disappointed to learn that both words were nouns—a person, place, or static thing contained within a limited existence. In my heart, though, I understood these words to be verbs—in motion, actionable, evolving. I knew that remorse, for example, is far more than saying the words “I’m sorry.” Remorse showed up in who I surrounded myself with, the seemingly small choices I made, and the big goals I set. I also understood insight as illumination that expands over time. The connecting of dots between the root concepts of life lessons, and making conscious how they influence our daily decisions. Insight was understanding why I chose to involve myself in volunteer programs outside of what was mandated, or why I spoke up not just for myself but also for others locked up.

I began to write with a sharpened purpose. I took my ass to the law library. No longer would I put my life in the hands of some court-appointed attorneys, who saw me as no more than another number on their caseload, another generic cut-and-paste parole appeal brief to be submitted to the court in order to get paid. In some ways, it helped to push against an edge. If it wasn’t for my negative experiences, I might have never been so determined to cultivate my own self-advocacy. Even when I encountered a positive attorney experience, which I did, I wouldn’t just acquiesce to their defense strategies. Rather, I looked at it as a chance to build together. As far as I was concerned, I was the one best suited to talk about my experiences. Lo and behold, once I began writing my own appeals, and doing so in my own voice, I started to win some—and for others as well.”]

Alejo Rodriguez, from And Still I Write: Creative Expression for Self-Advocacy, from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life In Prison, by PEN America and edited by Caits Meissner, 2022

[chevaliermesfait]

A Handbook for Creating a Literary Life in Prison - Electric Literature

Caits Meissner, editor of "The Sentences That Create Us," on how the literary community can support prison abolition

What I think is such a bomb in reading those particular excerpts is they say writing is going to bring you into very painful moments, how do you stay with the feeling without losing yourself? How do you create safety in a completely unsafe environment where your cellmate might honestly try to kill you? How do you build psychological safety, in a place that is fundamentally the exact opposite of safe? These writers talk about what writing can do for us—create an internal life of the mind that becomes a parallel world to the one you’re living in physically, and that reality creating is phenomenally powerful. I think in order to address harm you’ve done and harm done to you, both heavy things, you need some baseline of safety to go there. I think writing can provide a path, and especially within a book like this where you’re living it alongside people who are opening up their path to be able to really strengthen the mind.