News
Page 8
Street Roots • Aug. 26-Sept. 1,2016
Street Roots • Aug. 26-Sept. 1, 2016
News
Ja il librarian gives inmates
the key to understanding the world
finish reading their books.
For nearly all the participants, being in a
book group is an unfamiliar experience.
Many have not made it through high school,
and some have been in and out of the
criminal justice system for years; often they
don’t know what it is like to be taken
BY JANE SALISBURY
seriously as a reader or a thinker. The
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
tastes of her participants run from mass-
f the stereotype of a jail librarian
market fiction to serious non-fiction, and
involves a stem woman trundling her
Carol makes sure there is a mix of classics
cart down a narrow catwalk as hands
and current titles. They are asked to read
reach through bars for tattered Westerns, everything from Oliver Sacks to Alexander
then Carol Cook breaks the mold.
Dumas to John Steinbeck.
Carol is a library outreach specialist for
Every February, when Multnomah
Multnomah County Library who works with
County Library selects a book for its
the inmates in Multnomah County jails. She
Everybody Reads program, engaging the
is a small, fast-
whole community in reading and discussing
talking, fast-walking
the same title, Carol invites the Inverness
"The greatest challenge of the day is: how
woman from
to bring about a revolution of the heart.
inmates to participate - a way of connecting
Hawaii, proud of
them to their fellow citizens outside the
Carol Cook uses books to
help readers connect with
the people they admire
outside. Some inmates find a childhood they
never had when they read Steinbeck or
Twain for the first time — the books many of
us take for granted.
“Thank you for caring truly about all the
men and women here,” one inmate wrote to
Carol. “Some folks do not understand the
damage toll suffered beginning as children
and how devastating that is.”
When Carol brings tales of endurance
and survival to her literacy group, her
readers love the gripping stories, but they
also strike a deep chord. Recently, the
group read and discussed “In the Heart of
the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship
Essex,” by Nathaniel Philbrick. The Essex
was a whaleship out of Nantucket that was
attacked by an enormous sperm whale and
sank in 1820. (This incident is believed to
have inspired Herman Melville in the
writing of “Moby Dick.”) The shipwrecked
I
h e r roots, w ith an
a
island sensibility
and modesty about
her accomplish
ments. Carol
selects books for
revolution which has to start
the Multnomah
with each one of us."
County Detention
Dorothy Day
Center and
Inverness Jail. She
spends many hours
each week at Inverness, where she visits
the dorms, maintains the book collection,
takes reading suggestions, hands out
information about anything from operating a
food cart to dog training and runs two book
discussion groups.
Although Carol has introduced many
inmates to a wider world in the eight years
she has worked in this position for
Multnomah County Library, she is more
eager to talk about their accomplishments
than hers. You can hear it in her voice as
she admits to gently scolding people to
finish their books, or encouraging them in
their modest post-release dreams. She
believes strongly in community and family
and brings that Hawaiian sense of
interdependence and deep caring to her
work at Inverness.
Once a month, Carol hands out a new
title for her book group to read, along with
some history and background to consider as
they tackle it. Choosing the title is not
always easy. Contrary to the intellectual
freedom principles of public libraries, books
are restricted in the jails: no true crime, no
hardbacks and no sensational covers. She
considers carefully what titles are likely to
be both appealing and challenging. Time is
on her side, however; inmates, probably
more often than the average library patron,
walls, a
Carol calls her book discussions “literacy
groups.” While the majority of inmates in
the United States do not read above a
fourth- or fifth-grade level, that is not the
kind of literacy that Carol is promoting.
Instead, it is literacy about the world, the
kind of expansive view unavailable to a kid
without the advantage of a stable family and
a good education. Using books like
“Undaunted Courage” and “My Beloved
World,” full of interesting ideas and
indomitable people, Carol helps readers see
the common thread between themselves
and the individuals they admire. They learn
to find kindred spirits in the most unlikely
figures: Supreme Court Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, in her struggles with poverty
and an alcoholic father, and Temple
Grandin, the autistic animal expert, about
whom one inmate wrote, “That lady is
awesome.” When a young man whose life
has been scarred by abuse and failure can
catch a glimpse of himself in a Supreme
Court justice, something remarkable is
happening.
The poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, who was
incarcerated in the Arizona State Prison for
five years on drug charges and has since
become an award-winning teacher and poet,
writes about reading: “Not knowing how to
read and write leads to not knowing where
windows come from, how Cars are made,
how people pay for cars. Not knowing how
to read and write is only the top of the
problem, because behind that wall, you
don’t know anything and how anything
operates in society, and that’s the
nightmare.” In this context, literacy means
reading to understand the world.
Knowing how things operate in society:
That can be a revelation to a man who has
sailors s e t o u t in sm all w h aleboats an d
Carol Cook, a library outreach specialist fo r M ultnom ah County Library, works with inmates in M ultnomah County jails.
only known generational poverty, a chaotic
family life and the revolving door of
incarceration, or a woman who has been
repeatedly incarcerated for prostitution or
drugs and has had her children taken away.
Carol does not take any particular interest
in the charges that have brought inmates to
jail; they may be serving short sentences or
awaiting trial for serious crimes. She is
more interested in awakening their minds.
While the list of reasons that bring people
to jail is long, the curiosity of inmates about
the world beyond their troubled lives, once
ignited, is deep.
The Revolutions of the
Heart series originates
from a workshop taught by
Martha Gies, whose
students are profiling
people in the community
who inspire us. The title
comes from Dorothy Day:
» “The greatest challenge o f
I the day is: How to bring
1 about a revolution o f the
I heart, a revolution which
I has to start with each one
po/ws. ” (Loaves and Fishes:
; The Inspiring Story o f the
I Catholic Worker Movement)
I
A few years ago, Carol welcomed a
young woman into the women’s book
discussion at Inverness. The woman, who
was awaiting trial, was enthusiastic and
well-spoken and, in fact, had studied to be
an engineer. She encouraged other women
to join and contribute insights to the
discussion.
When she was sentenced to federal
prison in another state, she continued to
stay in touch with Carol, who has helped
her with ideas for starting a book
discussion group among her fellow
prisoners. Although she finds that books
are much more restricted in her prison,
she is finding ways to bring classics and
older titles in to share.
Carol’s files bulge with passionate letters
about the difference reading has made in
people’s lives, even behind bars. A typical
letter reads, in part: “I love it, it has opened
my mind, spirit and horizon.... What we
learn here has made me want to be a better
man.” Part of the mission of this type of jail
program is to make a real life inside,
because some inmates may be going to
prison for a long time. Not everyone is
preparing for an eventual return to a life
underwent extreme deprivation and
starvation in their attempt to reach land
over many following months.
As the group talked about the book, the
conversation ranged widely over whale
biology, pre-Civil War race relations,
weather patterns, the geography of the
South Pacific and cannibalism. There was a
shared sense of wonder, loud laughter about
who might have to be eaten first, and there
was respectful give and take.
The next book for Carol’s group was to
be “Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse
Owens and Hitler’s Olympics,” by Jeremy
Schaap, an account of the unrelenting
racism directed against Olympic runner
Jesse Owens and his determination in the
face of i t While accounts of extraordinary
strength and survival are riveting for
anyone, they hold special appeal for Carol’s
book group, as they face their own tests of
endurance. There is an unusual freedom,
too, in the truly multicultural nature of a
typical jail book group. Carol’s current
group has white, African-American, Asian
and Hispanic participants. As she said, “we
can talk about racism. We can have a
dialogue about racé in the confines of a jail
group. I assure the participants that what
we talk about in the group stays in the
group. They appreciate that they all have a
safe, equal forum to share their thoughts.”
Learning to read deeply and critically will
serve these people in whatever awaits
them. Losing oneself in a book is freeing for
all of us, but perhaps most profoundly for
those who are behind bars. As one person
put it, speaking for others who have
expressed the same feeling, “When I am in
book group, I forget that I am in jail.”