It’s been a minute. I’ll make a post on my new book, MAMA’S PANZA, soon.
Last month, in April, I was invited to visit the Alice Worsley School, a Fresno County “juvenile justice center.” It was part of the American Library Associations “Great Stories Club”. The students read my young adult book, Gabi, a Girl in Pieces, and then I was invited to visit and hold a conversation with the kids.
I had never visited a juvenile detention center. When you walk in it felt like a traditional high school, the buildings are very similar and couldn’t help think about the little bit of Foucault I can recall from grad school. Everything the same except the guards and the locked fences an the uniforms. There was a vegetable garden and the young men in the book club, all Brown and Black, proudly told me what vegetables they were growing.
We sat and they asked questions and we shared about our upbringings and how they overlapped. At one moment I was sharing why Gabi’s dad died in the book. As a teen I feared my dad would die of an overdose all the time and before I could get the words out and explain one of the kids said, “Because you were afraid he’d die.”
I’m not sure what the young men did to warrant being put in a cage and I didn’t ask (only one shared with me). What I do know is that I grew up and loved boys and men like them, some who got caught and some who didn’t and were able to live their lives without the weight of “inmate” or “felon” on their back.
I’ve never been incarcerated but I do know what it’s like to have a loved one locked up for a long time. I’ve seen what being incarcerated at such a young age can do to young people who are trying to figure themselves out and make mistakes, big ones sometimes, without anyone to guide them or give them grace. Often they’re in these situations because there was no one there to guide them from the beginning and they were raising themselves or rebelling against abuse or neglect. Asking to be heard.
One of the things that a young man said to me in the visit was that he’d never written or read poetry before but after reading my book he felt like he needed to write a poem and that it helped him with his anger. Then another shared another poem and another said he had never really read a book before but now he felt like writing his own story. These kids have a lot to say, they have a lot of experiences that other people, luckily, will never have to have.
The teacher who invited me was amazing. She was the librarian teacher and we talked about books and how responsive the group was to the topics that were in the book because they could relate to a lot of it. One of the boys even mentioned that because it was from a young woman’s perspective he felt he understood his sisters more.
The power of books and poetry and storytelling as part of progressive change is something that we often can quantify but know when we see it.
I don’t know if having books will change these kids lives and stop them from being pulled back by the carceral system but having more books is never a bad thing.
So here is my ask….
I have started a book registry for the book club members at Alice Worsley School. I asked for recommendations a few weeks ago on IG and folks chimed in. I narrowed it down to nine titles: Felon: Poems Reginald Dwayne Betts, The Crown Ain't Worth Much Hanif Abdurraqib, Citizen Illegal José Olivarez, The Essential Rumi - Reissue: New Expanded Edition: A Poetry Anthology (Expanded) Coleman Barks, The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo, Punching the Air Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations Joseph Rios, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, and American Inmate: The Album Justin Rovillos Monson.
I am asking you to please donate a copy of one of the books. I’d like to get twelve of each so that there is enough for the kids and their library. Click on this link https://bookshop.org/wishlists/0df9cf8733579b97f84fba7934a5cce9242f25ff to donate a book. Once I have twelve of one title I will ship them to the school. If you’d rather donate money you can Zelle (message me and I’ll send you the QR code) or Venmo @Isabel-Quintero-14 with “Alice Worsley” as the reason and I will use that to buy the books. Whatever is left over I’ll use to help buy some journals and pens for the kids to take home when they get out (most of them this summer). I’ll make sure to keep y’all updated. Thank you for reading and I hope you can donate.