{"id":3079,"date":"2013-10-17T13:11:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T17:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3079"},"modified":"2013-10-17T13:11:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T17:11:38","slug":"incarcerated-girls-write-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/incarcerated-girls-write-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Incarcerated Girls Write, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Teacher

Teacher Joanne Hayes at Journey House<\/p><\/div>\n

The Writing Workshop at Journey House<\/a> is an eye-opener, week after week.\u00a0 The writers, all incarcerated girls aged 13-17, join the optional workshop only if they genuinely want to come.\u00a0 That is key.\u00a0 We decide for ourselves how we want to run the workshop, who speaks, who reads aloud, and what we write about.\u00a0 There are no grades, no assignments, no evaluations, and no deadlines.<\/p>\n

The writing is formidable.<\/p>\n

These writers have lived, and they have stories to tell.\u00a0 Their words are vivid and raw, and when they read their work aloud, the heartfelt honesty is often gut wrenching.\u00a0 They\u2019ve written about drugs, murders, stealing cars, pimps, bad mothers, good mothers, protecting little sisters, losing weight, rape, the skin color of handsome boys, lesbian love, wanting to remain unknown, suicide, sex, heartache, religion, the street, snitches, abuse, loneliness, and hope.\u00a0 The same girl who writes about Skittles in one piece might write a eulogy in her next.\u00a0 One girl\u2019s journal entry about her first rape might inspire the next girl\u2019s poem about revenge, and tendrils of patterns unfurl.\u00a0 We notice the connections.<\/p>\n

In a typical workshop, three to eight writers will meet with Joanne Hayes, the English teacher of Journey House, one or two attendants, and me, the visiting writer, around six pushed-together tables in the cafeteria.\u00a0 I pass around a jar of cookies and ask if anyone has come with any writing she would like to read aloud.\u00a0 If so, we start listening.\u00a0 If not, I\u2019ll pass out a poem for us to consider briefly, and then we\u2019ll write in silence for five to ten minutes.\u00a0 After that, the writers volunteer to read their pieces aloud.<\/p>\n

In fact, however, no workshop is ever truly typical.\u00a0 Our meetings are different every time, with vibes of support, hostility, humor, celebration, and depression depending on who comes and what has been going on lately in Journey House and in the writers\u2019 lives.\u00a0 Sometimes, the girls start writing and don\u2019t want to stop.\u00a0 Other times, we read aloud so much that we don\u2019t get around to writing.\u00a0 Sometimes, a girl comes purely to sit by a friend.\u00a0 Once we met in a windowless sitting room.\u00a0 Another time, we cooked and talked about favorite books.\u00a0 Over the span of six weeks, a bond sometimes grows among the girls who regularly attend, and they trust the group with more personal pieces.\u00a0 When that happens, it can be intense.<\/p>\n

For me, the workshops both break my heart and inspire me.\u00a0 I admire the unflinching honesty of the writers, and their artistry.\u00a0 I appreciate that their stories are complex.\u00a0 When one of them tells me, point blank, that she intends to return to her old life and continue on as she did before she came to Journey House, I try to understand.\u00a0 I try to grasp what choices these girls genuinely have.<\/p>\n

Then I\u2019m glad when they show up the next week to write some more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Writing Workshop at Journey House is an eye-opener, week after week.\u00a0 The writers, all incarcerated girls aged 13-17, join the optional workshop only if they genuinely want to come.\u00a0 That is key.\u00a0 We decide for ourselves how we want to run the workshop, who speaks, who reads aloud, and what we write about.\u00a0 There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[177,37],"class_list":["post-3079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-teens","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3079"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3084,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079\/revisions\/3084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}