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| Changing Lives Through Literature |
| Feature Articles - Cultural | |
| Sunday, 31 March 2002 | |
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The nine men enter the room warily. They have arrived by taxi, with a friend, or with their probation officer. They come from their mother's house, a rented room, or no fixed address. All of them have been sentenced to be here as a condition of their probation. For most of them a college campus is more foreign than a jail cell. Tonight they join the ranks of the 200 men who have previously sat around this table, and the 2,500 men, women, and teenagers nationwide who have graduated from a "Changing Lives Through Literature" (CLTL) seminar. Students have been sentenced to the program on charges ranging from DUI to assault with a deadly weapon. Most have experienced a problem with substance abuse. The men around the table this evening are no exception. Their ages range from early twenties to mid-fifties; half are African-American. Their lives have been a litany of loss: early abuse, poverty, homelessness, addiction, disconnection from family and friends. For many of them, sitting around this table may be one of the few chances they have left to reinvent their lives. The history of CLTL CLTL is the brainchild of Dr. Robert Waxler, who still facilitates the University of Massachusetts classes. Dr. Waxler, a professor of English, a Dean, and a writer, believed that the humanities were being marginalized precisely at the time that they were most needed to deepen the national conversation. In the summer of 1991, he approached his friend, Judge Robert Kane, with the idea of sentencing felons to literature classes rather than jail. Kane, once a prosecutor and now a superior court judge, was frustrated enough with turnstile justice to agree to the experiment. That first group of eight men sentenced to the program by Kane had a total of 148 convictions between them. Every other week for 12 weeks the men gathered with Waxler, Kane, and their probation officer to discuss texts that had been chosen specifically because they dealt with issues of male identity and violence. In James Dickey's Deliverance, for example, four suburban men take a canoe trip through the swamps of the Deep South. Dr. Waxler writes: "Their trip is clearly a trip into the self, and those reading and discussing the story take a similar trip and discover new territory in their own psychic terrain." For many of these men, the printed page told a story of alienation. When and if they ever read, the words told someone else's story. For the first time sitting in CLTL, many discovered the pleasure of looking at the page and seeing themselves reflected there. In the seminar their opinions were solicited and respected. The discussions began simply. "What did you think of the story?" Dr. Waxler asked. He continued to probe, "What was the reading experience like for you?" Then they moved deeper into the story, with Dr. Waxler asking, "Why did this person do what he did? What happened next?" And then outwardly, "Does reflecting on your life change your experience of it? Is it possible for people to change themselves? Why is it so hard for us to tell the truth about what we feel?" None of the questions were rhetorical. Nor were any answers wrong, or ridden over by the professor or the judge. The cornucopia of responses was savored and pondered. The students were not here to be worked on, analyzed, or even taught, but to participate equally in the process of creating meaning. Right from the beginning, the energy and insight the men brought to the reading and classes convinced Waxler and Kane that CLTL could work. On the simplest level, says a probation officer, you could see a change over the course of the 12 weeks. The first night the men came to campus, the difference between them and the other college students was obvious, by the last class it was not. The men carried themselves differently. They also began to read to their children and to reconcile with their families. Some chose to go back to school after the CLTL class ended. Such brilliant success has been duplicated numerous times in 32 programs throughout Massachusetts, and in six other states as well as in England. Drawn by humanitarianism and captured by the magnetism of the seminar table, professors, judges, and probation officers repeatedly return to the seminars. The "Changing Lives Through Literature" classes are both deeply human and restorative not only for students, but for the professors and court officials as well. For probation officers, the conversation is a chance to interact with offenders on an individual level. For professors, the insights these students bring to the table enrich their own understanding of the literature that they love. For judges, the classes present an opportunity to be involved in a hands-on rehabilitative process. One judge who has participated for eight years calls the CLTL classes "the joy of my judging." Getting hardwired into human consciousness The novel being considered tonight is an elegant evocation of the relationship between two Harlem brothers, one is a schoolteacher and the other a jazz pianist as well as a recovering heroin addict. Sonny's Blues begins with the narrator discovering that his younger brother Sonny has been arrested for dealing heroin. He and Sonny have been estranged from one another for years. Their parents are dead. He wants to ignore the news. I was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse [heroin], he couldn't have been much older than these boys were now. These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone. (Baldwin, 260) Why is literature so powerful? Dr. Waxler believes that story is "hardwired into human consciousness." For most of human history, our sense of self, ancestry, and tradition has been passed down through storytelling in the form of pictures, spoken and written word. Stories are one of our oldest art forms. Storytelling is so prevalent in the way that we think that some linguists have come to believe that humans are not primarily rational creatures, but storytellers. Stories say everything, not just the things we want to hear. Like drugs, they affect us not only intellectually, but also emotionally and viscerally. They highlight the details of everyday life to which we are often oblivious: the habitual words we say to our parents, the furniture in the living room we've grown up in, the way the light in a child's eyes dies when she is rebuffed. Practiced as we are at keeping these things on the periphery, storytelling helps us to see how they are all connected. Storytelling mimics life, but in a condensed and dramatized format. It connects cause and effect, action and reaction, decision and consequence. Our stories now come primarily from newspapers and television, the stories have simple plots and easy answers. They chart the surface of life without plumbing its depths. For the interior life, we turn to literature. On the printed page, we are frequently transported from impulse to action to consequence, the entire sequence slowed down so that we can clearly see that different choices will produce different results. Dr. Waxler notes, "I believe that stories can save us from the chaos of our lives, and perhaps from death itself. When we experience the unfolding of a good story, we experience the unfolding of our own selves. We journey through language and discover our identity reflected there as if in a mirror." A former heroin addict and CLTL student says that each CLTL story "would relate to me in the sense that I could see myself, things that I did wrong, decisions that I made. I was eating it up like a starving man. "Here's what I know about addiction: When you've had a number of years of it, you don't remember the pain. You don't remember your family locking the door and shutting down the shades. You don't remember withdrawal. You don't remember selling your television set. You don't remember going to jail. All you know is that good feeling when the dope goes in your system." Storytelling helps us to remember not by denying the euphoria of the fix, but by juxtaposing it with the results. In Sonny's Blues, the narrator runs into a friend of his brother who is an addict and still hangs out on the street corners near the school. They walk toward the subway station together, discussing Sonny: "They'll send him away some place and they'll try to cure him." He shook his head. "Maybe he'll even think he's kicked the habit. Then they'll let him loose," he gestured, throwing his cigarette into the gutter. "That's all." "What do you mean, that's all?" But I knew what he meant. (Baldwin, 263) Over 90 percent of CLTL students have struggled with substance abuse. Many are required by probation to be in treatment for their addictions. All participants are expected to remain substance-free during the course of the seminar. On Hemingway and heroin Some students have cited the act of reading as an aid to recovery, filling time when they might have been watching TV, getting into trouble, or focusing on their withdrawal. In a sense, it substitutes a positive addiction for a negative one. The characters in the novels become role models to whom students can repeatedly turn to for inspiration. Dr. Waxler tells the story of a particular student who was inspired by Santiago of Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. In the story, the Cuban fisherman heads out to look for fish for 84 days despite coming home empty handed. The student told Dr. Waxler how he had been heading down a street in New Bedford, Massachusetts and came to an intersection. He knew that if he turned right at the intersection he would encounter his old buddies and score some heroin. But he thought of Santiago and how he kept getting up day after day. The CLTL student said, "Professor Waxler, I can't promise you that I'm never going to turn that corner. But for that day, I was able to walk on." Reading can help to curb the impatience that people living on the edge often have for the details of everyday life. Through narrative, we can see how a gesture or a word can shift a situation, a soft answer turning away anger, a checked tongue avoiding a confrontation. CLTL participants have often told Dr. Waxler how they've avoided fights because they took the time to think things through rather than merely react, as they might have before attending the program. Once participants decide to try to give up their addictions, there are still the messy strands of life to weave together into something coherent and meaningful. There are amends to make, relationships to nurture, and finances to sort out. The terror of cleaning up after themselves can send the substance abuser searching for the comfort of oblivion. Literature provides a sourcebook, an on-call counselor that reminds us that life basically involves putting one foot in front of the other. Literature also helps us view our actions in context. It provides a window through which to see the web of relationships stretching outward from individual characters to their family, neighborhoods, and larger community. It has the ability to place an individual's hardship and suffering in social context. In Sonny's Blues, the narrator finally writes to his brother in prison after his own child has died. Dr. Waxler tells the class: "The narrator's own pain has made his brother's pain real." Sonny travels to live with his brother in Harlem after being released from jail. Baldwin writes of the first meeting between the brothers: Everything I did seemed awkward to me, and everything I said sounded freighted with hidden meaning. I was trying to remember everything I'd heard about dope addiction and I couldn't help watching Sonny for signs. I wasn't doing it out of malice. I was trying to find out something about my brother. I was dying to hear him tell me he was safe. (Baldwin, 267) Recovery is not a blinding flash of inspiration followed by an immediate change of behavior. Each addiction is comprised of a complex mix of behavioral, emotional, and physiological factors Ñany of which can trigger relapse. For CLTL participants, recovery is often complicated by family and neighborhood environments that help to keep them locked in their old lives. After discussing T. Coraghessan Boyle's Greasy Lake, the opening novel of many CLTL programs, Dr. Waxler often asks, "Is it easier for someone considered 'good' to be 'bad,' or for someone 'bad' to become 'good?'" For many students in juvenile CLTL classes, this question is crucial. The thought of trying to change while still in same social group, in the same school, is almost inconceivable. It's a problem adults face as well. One Boston CLTL adult participant recalls his own struggles to stay sober and out of trouble: "People out there are still picking at you. Like coming up in the ghetto. If a person is trying to get up, it's like being in a barrel of rats, they'll pull you back down." CLTL provides a safe place for students to envision their own future and the assurance that such a change is truly possible. On the page in front of them in black and white, CLTL participants can see people transforming themselves and not only surviving but thriving. They gain the sense that they can rewrite their own lives. The community feeling surrounding a CLTL table is created from a number of factors: the literature itself, the democratic interplay of participants, and the safety of talking about an experience once removed. For everyone, there is the satisfaction that comes from knowing that one's yearnings and fears are part of a larger, more variegated fabric than one might have previously suspected. One probation officer says, "In the seminar we read the same books, we do the same writing, we have to participate in the same way. It shows each of us that we've all been rejected, we've all been victims, we've all been perpetrators, we're all human beings on the same journey." One night, while discussing Jack London's Sea Wolf, a student reflected on the main character, the captain of the boat "Ghost" and a believer in the tenet that "might makes right." "You know," said the student, "Wolf Larsen is a jerk." He paused a moment before continuing: "I know, I used to be Wolf Larsen." But "used to be" and "will be" are two totally different things. An early study of CLTL students showed that their recidivism rates were less than half of those offenders with similar records who had been sentenced to prison or simply probation. Further studies by individual courts have confirmed these findings. They've also shown that when students do reoffend, they tend to commit far less serious crimes and rarely commit violent crimes. But the successes stretch far beyond the courtroom. Simply finishing a novel and the program can boost a student's belief in his ability to complete tasks. Flush with their new CLTL diplomas, many students go back to school or to find better jobs. On a personal level, the civility they've received begins to extend outward, to their families and their communities. Ironically, it's the hard approaches, confrontation, punishment, and withdrawal of freedom, that send them back into the dank prisons of entrenched behavior. However, literature coaxes them into the light of day. The narrator of Sonny's Blues continues to worry about his brother, who has rejoined his musician friends. He considers searching Sonny's room for drugs. One night, he agrees to go to a nightclub to hear Sonny play. At the beginning of the set, Sonny struggles with the music and the piano. His brother reflects: All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. (Baldwin, 286) It's nearly 8:30 pm and the class is almost over. During the session connections have been made to other stories and other lives. Even if it is true, as Baldwin says, that there are no safe places, life still has some coherence, some meaning. In this story, Sonny's playing does take off, the Blues become his own. He pulls everything together to play a song stretching back through the life of his community and his family. Yet the last line of Sonny's Blues suggests ambiguity about his future. Dr. Waxler says that anybody who's suffered though addiction is always struggling. There are no guarantees. The only thing we can really do for each other is to hear each other's stories. One student says that Sonny has an addictive personality. He's going to go all the way with heroin, as the high of his piano playing draws him towards another high. The participants sit up and lean forward into the discussion. There is no back of the room to hide in and no reason to hide. The literature is willing to joust with their hidden dragons. Looking outside, the lights of the university cast shadows over the parking lots. The story for this night is over. Susan Major is a freelance writer and editor who has facilitated juvenile Changing Lives Through Literature classes. Form your own CLTL program The "Changing Lives Through Literature" program has been successfully adapted for use with groups of women and juveniles as well as with coed and family groups. Seminars have been held on college campuses, courthouses, day-treatment centers, and in prisons, including Riker's Island, New York. According to Dr. Waxler, CLTL "belongs anywhere there are people outside the mainstream, in any place where people have lost their voice." The format and content of each seminar is less important than the notion of democracy and the belief in story. Dr. Waxler writes, "The facilitator must work to draw each voice out and must be convinced that each participant has a perspective worthy of attention and articulation, a perspective that can add something to the story's meaning." While some classes use philosophical texts or articles about language and literature, most are based on stories or novels. Typically students read and discuss one novel or two short stories per session. Facilitators often choose literature that is reflective of their students' race, age, and gender. In addition to the team members, classes usually contain between eight and ten students. Larger classes often break up into small groups for discussion. Many facilitators use writing exercises either between or during classes. Most classes meet every other week for two-hour classes. Some classes, such as those associated with schools and day-treatment centers, are ongoing with the class composition changing. Others run for 12-16 weeks for a total of 6-8 sessions. The length and complexity of the literature read and discussed usually increases over these weeks. For more information about stories, sample syllabi, and setting up a CLTL group, visit www.umassd.edu/specialprograms/changing/home.htm or call 508 990-2282.              |
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