Letters from Prison

I wouldn't have imagined a couple of years ago, but I am looking forward to the letters I get from prison several times a month. If you've read my book, Chapter 10 is about "Jorge," my former student. If you haven't read it, it's cheap on Kindle right now and you can learn all about Jorge. Skip to Chapter 10; he's worth it.

Anyway, he is a very very special young man who, in a nutshell, had every single thing go wrong in his life that could and (read the chapter!) he's now in prison for 19 years. I've gotten letters from three different prisons. I've been to visit him in prison twice, and I'd prefer to never go to a prison again, but that's where he is. And as I told my students many years ago, they'd always be "my kids."

Jorge is working on his life story. When he read my book, he said that he was surprised that there were people in the world who didn't know how hard life is for people like him. he wants to tell them. So this kid, who stopped attending school regularly after 5th grade, is going to write his life story. And I am going to get it published, no matter what.

We're also thinking about publishing either his letters to me (I have them all) or our total correspondence (not sure if he has all mine, however). I think that would also shed a lot of light on many of our prisoners and what led them there.

So, if you have ideas or leads or connections, please do let me know. Otherwise, stay tuned, as someday you'll be hearing from him.

(To answer the inevitable questions: 1. Yes, I have his permission to publish this photo, and 2. Yes, a criminal attorney told me that inmates in California have a constitutional right to publish their writing without retribution. But I'm still using a pseudonym for him)

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A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....

A New Prison, Part Two

Second very long part of the prison visit report. After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk. First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other pri...

A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea...

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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