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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