Creative Writing

Just about every class I have taken in my entire academic career has changed my perceptions. Learning will often bring about new ways to interact with the world around us.

Periodically, I see some students have difficulty with the array of curricula offered by the Prison University Project. Now, I am not the best student, but I know when to shut up and listen, and I know when to speak up and ask questions. Some students are too stubborn to give up their ways and spend valuable class time trying to teach the professors how to teach them, and then blame the teacher for their poor grade instead of taking that time to ask question to clear up confusion.

This is not a complaint, but an instance of changed perceptions. On a modern-day plantation, trying to teach an instructor or a staff member is met with swift retribution, which results in either confused students remaining confused for want of asking a question or students biting the bullet and putting their education at risk. Not so with the Prison University Project.

Instead of disciplinary action to stave off disruptions in classes, volunteers and staff do their best to work with students to gain a clear understanding of the task at hand. That is not to say they are lenient on instances of academic dishonesty or inappropriate behavior, but it is refreshing to know that there are people willing and able to help students along their educational paths instead of putting up walls and fences to imprison mental growth.

I have a feeling you may be asking, “When is he going to get the part about changing perceptions?” Well, I mention the first instance from a place where disruptive behaviors were once met with stiff punishments and even suspension or expulsion, thereby hindering educational progress. It has been my experience that disruptive behavior was to be punished and dismissed. Instead, I see one-on-one time with staff members and volunteers. I see discussions on how to improve classroom etiquette and assignment choices designed to better facilitate learning. I see people interacting with students on a level field rather than teachers and staff condescending to their students. I see lives changing for the better.

Perhaps I should dig a little deeper. The volunteers here could be doing anything with their lives: teaching at Ivy League schools, or their alma maters, watching their children play soccer, or watching TV all day, or even skiing in Aspen… Instead they choose to come in here and help us get a good education. They take time out of their precious human lives to helps us repair our own lives. I grew up in the ghetto. I did lots of learning running the streets, and one thing I learned is that everyone is out for themselves and that no one is on your side. That is a perception I had to unlearn and it is due to the good people at the Prison University Project.

Talk about changing perceptions? I learned that the question I just asked was a sentence fragment and indicative of colloquial speech. Ethics class gave me a new outlook on right vs. wrong. English taught me the power of words. Algebra showed me how to solve for x in my life. Public speaking taught me that great emcees have to be great orators. The Prison University Project taught me that it is okay to hope.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

My grandma didn’t graduate from high school. She’s a survivor of crushing racism in the deep South. She moved to California where she scrubbed bathrooms to put my father through medical school. My father represented a phenomenon in the black community called “making it.” My family lived the story of sacrifice amidst racial injustice so that the next generation could climb a little higher, could leave poverty a little further behind: the African-American dream.

My brothers and I are all in prison or on parole. We live beneath the poverty line, beneath the crushing weight of systematic racism. My family’s African-American dream died with us. Except the story isn’t over until the book closes. My book is open, and a college degree is the next chapter in revising my family’s dream. My dream. It’s my next step in building a legacy that instead of dragging my kid down, will lift her up.

How will this legacy look?

It begins with the most important thing I want to teach my daughter. No matter how bad things get, no matter how low you fall, it’s never too late and you’re never in too deep to turn toward the light.

The legacy continues with an MFA. I want to design curriculums for inner-city schools that will take advantage of art’s power to manifest positive change in communities and in individual lives. Cycles of addiction and violence in urban communities are often fueled by a sense of powerlessness, a sense that you have no power over your life except that which you can immediately seize through violence or other antisocial behavior. The youth trying to survive these cycles need a healthy way to exercise power, and while activism and sports are healthy exercises of self-determination, artistic expression is what saved me in my 20s. By then I was already serving a life sentence in prison. I want to teach children what I learned in my 20s while they’re in elementary and junior high school.

The legacy ends, well, never. We live in a divided world, and our divisions are destroying us. I’ve often witnessed the power my writing has to bridge differences between people. If I can teach generations to write with the consciousness that their work can heal our world, and they teach generations after them, the legacy continues.

I was sentenced to a total sentence of 55 years to life. The judge’s pronouncement still echoed in my head six months later as I paced the short distance from back wall to front gate of a maximum-security cell. As insanity wrestled with humanity, I had to decide who I wanted to win. The decision wasn’t mine alone. Society had to decide if I was worth giving the time and space to make something from the ashes of my life, or if I should be thrown away with the key.

I voted for humanity. Recognizing that my voice was still free, I declared myself a writer. I envisioned it as a career that could happen even from behind bars. I dreamed of writing something so profound, people would be motivated to change their lives for the better. However, I didn’t have the skill to match the passion. I never went to college and I had barely finished high school. I didn’t even have one of those “Writing for Dummies” books. To really become an effective writer, I needed the space and opportunity to learn the skill. I needed society to decide that a Lifer is worth giving a college education.

Society’s split on whether to provide a free education to the incarcerated. “Why educate men who may never go home?” some asked. “Lifers ruined their lives, so a degree would be a waste. I say, educating Lifers makes sense because the overall value of doing so adds to society.

Lifers matter to society because we are all connected. Whether or not we go home, we come into contact with those who are set free everyday like prison staff, corrections officers, and other incarcerated Americans with parole dates. How those relationships go can have a ripple effect on all of society. If Lifers give others attitude or traumatize others, those individuals will take that out into the community. That could mean arguing with significant others, road rage, alcoholism, suicide, or harming other people.

College teaches skills that make interactions between Lifers and everyone else productive. Communications classes teach us how to use verbal judo instead of violence. Ethics classes give us a better sense of right and wrong under extreme conditions. English classes help make Lifers articulate, which in turn leads to better relationships with their families, better odds of being understood on appeal, and eliminates the frustration that can build from feeling like no one is listening to you. From history classes, we learn how our government was formed—how it works and how to work from within it. Simply put, college courses help make Lifers better people, and our society a better place.

Educating Lifers can also have a positive effect on the rest of the incarcerated population. Some of us have committed crimes that have made us legends in the minds of some young people. If the younger men see us going to school, it may inspire them to do the same. Education can transform us from ghetto legends into positive role models.

Now let me tell you what being educated has done for me. Getting a college education has elevated my ability to write, which has given me a career that transcends being incarcerated. My writing is good enough to be published in several publications like The Marshall Project, and the Missouri Review. Plus, former heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs has entrusted me—a Lifer—with writing his memoir. Additionally, I write for San Quentin News. The Society of Professional Journalists recognizes us—a bunch of Lifers—as professional journalists. My education is something I am using right now—from a cage—to better myself and to better society.

A college degree has a value well beyond getting a job, or the scroll it is printed on. Everybody should have access to a college education because everybody counts. Everybody matters. Everybody has value. Recognizing the value in each other from those in the lowest positions to those in the highest is important because we are all impacted by each other. We are all connected to each other. Remembering to educate the forgotten is a smart move.

Many people talk about “seeing the light.” It’s clichéd, I know. My education has been that proverbial light. It just so happens to have taken 20 odd years for me to see what people saw in higher education. Like the cave dwellers in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” I was limited in how I perceived the world. I viewed life through very narrow lenses and because of that restricted vision, I wasn’t capable of critically thinking my way beneath the surface.

Attending college has afforded me the opportunity to escape the cave of darkness and obscurity and enter a world of new experiences. As a student, I have learned so much from my instructors and other students through classroom, lectures, discussion, and brainstorming. Most important of all, what I have learned concerns my own development. Education has given me the confidence to actualize my potential.

Many critics question why prisoners should get free education. I say, why not offer education to prisoners? Too many incarcerated Americans enter the criminal justice system with little to no education. I committed my crime at 15 and received a 25 years to life sentence. Before that, I was expelled from high school three months into my freshman year. It was a long journey and I worked towards earning my high school diploma. Today, I am not the lost, insecure kid who sought acceptance from his peers. I have a college education. I can discuss Plato’s Republic, or the complicated mind of Nietzsche, who claimed Plato preached virtue as a means to keep the lower class in the lower rung of society, or the prison industrial complex and its insatiable appetite. Education unlocked that side of my mind that was confined as Plato’s cave dwellers were confined by their legs and their necks. A college degree will ensure that I stay out of the cave and help those still shackled to unchain themselves and crawl towards the light.