I recently attended the Prison Monologues as a part of my internship. The Prison Monologues is part of a creative writing class in the Women's Community Correction Center that allows inmates to showcase their writings to students at high schools.
The program is a highly emotional performance where the inmates get to talk about their lives and the objective of it is to motivate problematic students down the right path and to make better choices for themselves.
First one of the 5 women opens up with saying "I remember as a little girl looking at a balloon tied to my hand, without a worry in the world. Now i wake up to a confined wall and life has turned out so differently for me".
Another inmate relates on her accounts with drugs and how it has ruined her life and her relationship with her daughter. She relates a story about her daughter who sent her a letter saying how much her mother has let her down and only wants to connect when she gets caught be the police everytime.
One woman who was 53 years old accounted how she was "raped by my own father, molested and gang banged beofre the age of 16 and I used drugs to cope with all my problems". She then relates how there were other more positive ways to dealing with the issues and the people who hurt her are free while she victimized herself and ended up in jail.
There was a surprise performance by a former inmate who was released from prison recently and flew in from the Big Island to relate her story. She had been drunk driving and hit into an oncoming car and had killed the passenger in that vehicle.
All the accounts were told to the family court which is a program that minors who are running into trouble with the law such as running away from home, truancy and other minor offences. Nonetheless it seemed to be effective because there were a lot of tears that were shared hearing the accounts of some of the inmates and how they live their lives out in prison. Some had been there for 10 or more years but were allowed to join the program because they were non-violent offenders and also had good behaviour during their stays so far in prison.
i don't know if i could interview people in prison. it would be so heart-wrenching just seeing how the events in a person's life affects them in a negative way.
ReplyDeleteOh, that must have been an interesting experience. I had the opportunity to do something like that back in high school. I remember my government teacher preparing the class by saying the inmates might try to throw feces at or pee on you or say some profane things. I stayed home that day....LOL!
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