As I stand in front of more than a dozen incarcerated people I ask myself, “Why are they here?” In truth I never ask them why or how they ended up in jail. However, there is another question that pops into my mind every week as I start my writing workshops in jail: “Why am I here?”
The men and women here have no choice. A judge decided they committed a crime that deserves incarceration. Even though they don’t want to be behind bars they must serve time. But what about me? Why am I here? Why do I go to jail when I don’t have to? And why do I actually look forward to coming here every week?
The simple answer is: I don’t know. I know how it happened, but not why it happened. It was October 2022. I woke up in my house in East Hampton and the moment I opened my eyes I said to myself, “I know what I want to do next. I want to take my memoir writing program to a prison.”
I am someone who embraces the idea that at night while we are asleep we process a lot of thoughts and emotions. We go to bed with a problem weighing on us and wake up the next morning with a new path toward a solution. We wake up with a new sense of perspective that makes us feel calmer.
There is scientific truth behind this. Every day while awake we create a million new sensory memories that end up in a part of our brains where short-term memory is stored. All that information needs to be reconnected with our main memory, the memory that we accumulate over a lifetime. That process of moving information from one part of the brain to another happens while we are asleep.
So here I am on an early morning in mid-October having processed something new overnight. I want to do something different. I am ready for a change. I’m excited about upping the ante. I want to take my memoir writing workshops out of the safe walls of a library and inside the uncertain walls of a prison.
I have no idea where to begin. There are plenty of educational courses offered in prisons and jails all over the country, so I call my best friend in Massachusetts. For years Brad has been involved with mental health in the prison system through Brown University. He loves my idea and offers to get back to me with contacts. I reach out to another friend. Howard knows someone who teaches poetry in Nevada. I call this guy. He tells me that working in prison has been the most rewarding thing he has done in years. He encourages me to do the same. I try to find information online.
I search and search and search, moving in circles. Eventually, I find an advocacy organization on Long Island whose name suggests educational programs for incarcerated people. I call and the woman who answers the phone puts me on the right track. I should call the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and she gives me the name of the person to contact. But there is a glitch — no email because the county government was forced to go largely offline after a cyberattack.
An email would have allowed me to collect my thoughts and formulate a reasonable initial proposal, but a voice-mail message makes me sound lame and stupid. I feel unprepared to frame my new idea in a 30-second message. A week later an unknown number pops up on the screen of my cellphone. It is coming from area code 631. The caller is with the sheriff’s office. I expect him to brush me off, give me a physical address to send a written proposal, and then I’d never hear from him again.
Instead he engages me in a real conversation, asks me good questions, and shows interest. Halfway through the call, which lasts about 15 minutes, I say something that piques his interest. “Memoir writing is like group therapy without a therapist in the room.”
Now I seem to have his undivided attention. I start sharing with him how this form of writing has transformed many people who have taken my workshops. They approach it as creative writing, but what they get out of it is a support group particularly receptive to personal introspection.
We talk, and talk, and talk. Something else piques his interest. I volunteer for an organization that offers English classes to the Latino community on the East End of Long Island. I guess he read into that activity my involvement in the local community. He wants to know more and reacts enthusiastically. He asks for my bio and a written proposal regarding memoir writing.
References are the next step. Fortunately, in addition to the full support of the director of the East Hampton Library, I also have the strong endorsement of the police chief in the Village of East Hampton. An additional step is a sheriff’s office background check. It comes back clear.
A few days before Christmas, he calls me while I am in Texas for the holidays. “You are in,” he says. “You may start anytime in the new year.” It is the best Christmas present I could ask for. Crazy, right? For most people a great Christmas present would be a personal object. For me it is the green light to go to jail.
This week marks the two-year anniversary since I started my adventure behind bars. I am as excited today as I was back then, minus the nervous feeling I had that first day in 2023. I had never been to jail before and was not sure how I was going to gain the trust of incarcerated people. After all, I was asking them to trust me in the daunting exercise of opening up about their lives and putting their thoughts and emotions on paper.
“Why am I here?” I still don’t have an answer. But 24 months later I suspect that what draws me back week after week is that at this Suffolk County correctional facility I learn as much as I teach. I am here to teach incarcerated people how to connect the dots in their lives — the good, the bad, and the confusing ones — but along the way I learn not to judge individuals just because they are wearing a forest green uniform.
Andrew Visconti, a former journalist, lives in East Hampton.