Prison Truth Through Fiction

How do you prepare artists to teach in the foggy upside down netherworld of prison? This episode tells how California's Arts in Corrections program answered that question with a twist. Excerpted from the recently published, The Book of Judith (New Village Press) and tells the amazing story of how poet/teacher Judith Tannenbaum's crafted the story of a fictional prison to reveal the often confounding reality of prison life.

The Book of Judith: Opening Hearts Through Poetry

Edited by Spoon Jackson, Mark Foss, and Sara Press

An homage to the life of poet, writer, and teaching artist Judith Tannenbaum (b. 1947 – d. 2019) and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students. The book presents different aspects of Judith through a collection of original poetry, prose, essays, illustrations, and fiction from 33 contributors who knew her. Each piece of writing spotlights a voice that Judith’s teachings once touched, and these combined memories help form a clearer picture of her legacy.

Five pencil drawings, inspired by those serving life sentences in prison without possibility of parole, separate the book into the following sections: Unfinished Conversations, After December, Looking and Listening, and Legacy. In Unfinished Conversations, contributors share their bond with Judith Tannenbaum through prose and excerpts from letters both real and imagined. In the second section, After December, poets reflect on the life, artistry, and legacy of Judith. The third section, Looking and Listening, focuses on the truth-seeking qualities that Judith brought to her work. The fourth section, Legacy, features work from winners of an award and a fellowship bestowed in her name.

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the Work of Artists in Prison in our JUSTICE ARTS COLLECTION

The Book of Judith: A Prison Truth Through Fiction

Sometimes what we like to think of as the objective truth misses the mark. Particularly, when it comes to human learning and cooperation. Now, I'm not talking about math and chemistry here. I'm talking about the really complicated stuff that happens when we come together to tackle the hard questions. I'm talking about those times when our ideas and perspectives and feelings and beliefs, all the things we bring into our problem, solving relationships with each other don't fit into a neat little box. I'm talking about one of the 21st centuries, most vexing problems.

It comes from a recently published book from New Village Press called The Book of Judith. Which is an homage to the life of poet writer and teaching artists Judith Tannenbaum, and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students. Judith who passed away in 2019 was deeply committed to nurturing both incarcerated writers and her fellow artists working in prison. As a mentor for what are referred to as outside artists, she believed conventional rule books and orientations provided to those artists failed to capture the complexities of working inside a prison. In response, she researched and wrote a story of a fictional prison to reveal the often upside down reality of [00:02:00] prison life.

That work called North Coast Correctional Facility: A Novella, changed the way teaching artists were trained for what became one of the largest residential arts programs in the world. This excerpt from the Book of Judith is, with the help of a fabulous cast, my telling of the tangled, twisting often calamitous story of its creation.

The Novella: Showing Truth Through fiction.

North Coast Correctional Facility, a novella. Introduction.

[00:02:49] Bill Cleveland: August, 1989. Sacramento. California.

This is the fourth space in the past two years for our outfit, known officially as the Office of Community Resources Development. The “Community” part of this clunky title stands for something we at the California Department of Corrections (CDC) call “outside.” “Outside” as in the opposite of “inside” which represents the concrete and razor wire clad citadels most Californians just refer to as prisons. The California penal code identifies these places as correctional institutions. Prisoners just call them “joints.”

Community Resources, as our office is called, is what some around here think of as the do-gooder unit of the expanding corrections universe. My boss, Claude Finn, is one of ten CDC Assistant Directors. He oversees volunteers, chaplains, self-help programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, a few voc ed programs and the unit that I run, called Arts in Corrections (AIC). If there were a Richter Scale for Corrections’ do-gooders, AIC would be off the charts.

I turn from the window to confront the overflowing message spike in the middle of my desk, hoping for some other way to start my day.

My prayer is answered by the familiar ring of bureaucracy at work.

Phone Rings

[00:05:57] Bill Cleveland: Jim Carlson has been the artist facilitator at San Quentin Prison for the past four years. An artist facilitator is just that, an artist who is facilitating. In Jim’s case, he facilitates the work of a dozen or so teaching artists at one of the state’s two level 4 institutions. Level 4 is Corrections’ jargon for what prisoners call “hard time.” And “Q”, which was built in 1852, is as old and decrepit as it is hard, which makes it even harder.

Nevertheless, since his arrival, Jim, whose initial response to my job offer was, “No way!” has masterminded the building of an unlikely creative empire at San Quentin prison. A fine artist in his own right, Jim teaches printmaking, and clears the way, literally, for the dozens of artists who make up his crew. It’s quite a show. There’s a ceramics program, cranking out pots and sculptures; a music department with dozens of classes and bands of every type; there is also a theater program; all manner of painting and drawing classes; and even circus arts, taught by members of, what else, San Francisco’s famous Pickle Family Circus. Amidst all this bounty, the jewel in Q’s creative pantheon is the San Quentin writing program, presided over by an extraordinary writer named Judith Tannenbaum.

Given the sharp edges of the place it was amazing that someone as sensitive and thoughtful as Judith manages to function, let alone thrive, at Q. But she does, and so do her students. This is a place where truth, beauty, trust, tenderness, vulnerability, color, sensitivity, choice — all the intangible qualities humans need to thrive — are virtually nonexistent. But in her funky little classroom she makes these things available to her students through the often-arduous journey of becoming a writer. The price, though, is the hard work that Judith demands. Those that hang in have an opportunity to tap into the perpetual motion learning machine of art making. In the process, they become creators with a chance to own bit more of their unique story — an act of personal agency that is a precious thing, on the inside. I pick up the phone.

Bill Cleveland: Hey, Jim, what's up.”

[00:08:50] Bill Cleveland: Hey, Judith, what's up?

[00:09:00] Bill Cleveland: say more.

Judith Tannenbaum: Well, this is more than just a side gig for them, for us. I mean, we're coming here. Hoping to do some good, right?

[00:09:11] Judith Tannenbaum: But, once we pass through those iron gates, into this upside down world, it can be really disorienting.

[00:09:20] Judith Tannenbaum: Yeah, and to simplify things, some of them just go into black and white mode. You know, where the artists and the art students become the good guys, and the prison staff who work here, the enemy. The ones that stick around learn better, but sometimes the hard way.

[00:09:38] Judith Tannenbaum: Well, I want to use a made up prison to tell a real story of what we do. I want to fill it with inside and outside artists, all the conundrums, all the contradictions, all the heartaches, and the little victories we dance with every day.

[00:10:01] Judith Tannenbaum: Nope, I'm thinking of writing a novella.

Judith Tannenbaum: Coast Correctional Facility, A Nouvella: introduction.

Prison is a world, a world not only of despair and loneliness, violence and cruelty, but also a world of complex moments. A cellblock at 4 p. m. during Afternoon Count, the Donahue Show, on almost every TV. A man in green leading a handcuffed man in blue from a lockup unit to a classification hearing. The two men joking about Monday night's football game.

A woman serving life sentence for murder pouring milk from her lunch into a shallow dish for one of the homeless cats wandering around the grounds. This novella then attempts to give some sense of the world we are entering. It does so by moving from the experience of one character to the experiences of another.

point of view about how the whole is composed of individual parts.…

I am heading west out of Sacto. The big green and white sign overhead shouts “San Francisco 75 miles.” Thirty minutes later, the tiny sign for the California Medical Facility flashes by a few hundred yards before I break hard and hit the exit. Never fails, blink and you miss it. Those few who do notice that sign probably think it’s just a hospital. But it’s not. It’s a prison.

As I turn into the institution’s parking lot, I catch sight of Judith on her way to the front entrance lugging a big three-ring binder. Over the past few months, she has been filling that binder with transcripts of interviews with San Quentin staff, prisoners, and AIC artists. Those conversations and the stories they hold will provide the foundation for the “the nouvella.” But given its level 4 status, and the presence of California’s Condemned Row, no one could argue that San Quentin is a generic prison, if there even was such a thing. If the nouvella’s fictional North Coast Correctional Facility is going to translate beyond Q we both agreed that her research would need to broaden. CMF seemed like a good place to start.

We are met at the front of the institution by Artist Facilitator, Jerry Meeks and Community Resources Manager (CRM) Joe Henry. Jerry had been there since AIC’s early days. He ran a great program and had a good relationship with the CRM who was his on-site supervisor. Based on our experience at San Quentin we knew the quality of Jerry and Joe’s collaboration was an important story to tell. This is why we were here.

Judith’s approach to crafting the North Coast (NCCF) story is quintessential, well… Judith. As a colleague and a teacher, she is both nurturing and tough. She is that way with herself too, with a marked emphasis on the tough. To her, writing well means pushing, digging, questioning assumptions, challenging conventional wisdom, and paying attention to detail.

That said, the nouvella poses some unique challenges. Most of Judith’s writing has been works of art, poems, and stories crafted painstakingly in her unique voice, expressing what she wants to say, freely, as an artist. Compared to this, our nouvella is the writing equivalent of a strait jacket defined principally by the fact that she will be creating an official document for the most paranoid and restrictive bureaucracy in the state.

But, of course, Judith loves the challenge of testing herself in uncharted territory. As an artist she also understands that she has to be true to her own well-honed creative processes. This means immersing herself in the subject matter and opening up to the widest range of possible characters, stories and plot lines. As challenging as the project is, she knows she can’t begin by obsessing on the inherent restrictions. She also knows that she cannot convey the fractured logic of the prison sea from a singular perspective. Each of her central characters will have to speak for themselves, interpreting each scene from their own perspective.

Once we pass through security and settle into Jerry's little office, I just sit back and watch Judith do her thing. She's a natural at this, probably because she really wants to know; How does all this work, or not? Particularly, in the uncharted territory that is being negotiated by Jerry, the artist and Joe, the career corrections guy who are somehow working together to build an art program in an institution in what is fast becoming the largest prison system in the world. I can see that Judith is a no-pressure interviewer. She's just after stories. And these guys are more than obliging. After an hour or so telling tales, she has everything she needs.

By December, Judith has settled on the cast of characters whose lives will be bound up in the North Coast story. In addition to Artist Facilitator Al Greer and CRM Delores Mendoza, the institution’s writing program features prominently, with veteran instructor Susan Robertson and a visiting poet named Varella. Although they differ in many ways, Susan is quite obviously Judith’s North Coast counterpart. Varella, Susan’s good friend and poetic partner, brings an unvarnished outsider’s perspective to the story. The highest-ranking administrator is Delores Mendoza’s boss, Associate Warden Sam Randle who, despite a couple of decades climbing through the ranks, approaches his job with brains and a heart. Correctional Officer Betsy Chin follows suit from her own position as one of a small number of women COs trying to make a decent living in one of the most testosterone-saturated workplaces on the planet.

Naturally, there are a number of prisoners with central roles. These include two talented and outspoken prison writers who figure prominently in one of the nouvella’s most intense episodes. Mitch Reiser is a brilliant poet and painter whose devotion to the writing program goes far beyond his love of writing. Another writer, Timothy Augustus, is an uncompromising soul who very much keeps his own counsel. Timothy understands that the distance you maintain between what you know, and what you say can mean a lot inside.

[00:19:29] Timothy Augustus: Mitch was a subtle one, although Timothy had to laugh and laugh to himself at how the observant poet Susan seemed so oblivious to what to him was so obvious.

Or, not exactly oblivious. Clearly uncomfortable. Timothy could see that Mitch was interpreting the way Susan tugged her hair, looked away from his gaze, as a statement that some part of her wanted him, too. Mitch was reading Susan's vulnerability, her inability to draw a firm line, as a sign that eventually she might be his.

Eventually. That's what Susan didn't quite get. Timothy knew that Mitch had all the time in the world. He was a lifer; he wasn't going anywhere. He could approach her with his love poem, watch her get to a point of maximum confusion, then pull back, throw out something a guest artist said two months ago, talk about a poem Susan once read, refer to the way Tall Tony recited when they made the videotape. That slow build-up of shared details was bound to make someone like Susan feel safe. 


San Quentin is our biggest program and nearby, so I get down there a lot. Hitting the road at 5:30 a.m. beats the traffic and gets me across the Richmond San Rafael Bridge in plenty of time for my 8:00 meetup with Jim and Judith. After I park, I grab my briefcase and head for the singlewide trailer that serves as the first checkpoint for entrance into the facility. The CO on duty passes me through with the flash of my CDC ID.

Every time I come here, the incongruity of the bayside bump of land known as Point San Quentin truly overwhelms me. On my left, mewing gulls rise up against a cloudless blue sky stretching above a 14-mile expanse of the San Francisco Bay and the City’s iconic skyline. On my right, a mortared castle right out of Macbeth looms, sans the maces, moats and moving trees. As I approach the twin castle towers that frame the institution’s main entrance, a green cluster of first watch COs spill out on their way to the staff parking lot. The last one out nods and holds the heavy iron door for me. It’s a cliché, but it really is like passing through the portals of hell. Inside, day fades to grey and the bay sounds are smothered by the hard metal clicks and crashes of the sally port gates echoing in the entryway’s vaulted stone passageway. If anyone needs a reminder of where they are, this medieval tableau should leave no doubts.

Across Q’s central courtyard, the square squat Education Building is dwarfed by the five story housing units on either side. As I enter the door of the AIC office, I am reminded of how precious space is in here. Jim’s basement lair is more like a closet than a real office, more so because it also functions as the AIC storage locker. Sitting among boxes of oil paint and art paper Jim and Judith are engaged in an animated conversation. They each smile in my direction without breaking the rhythm of their back and forth.

[00:23:15] Bill Cleveland: I haven't been tracking the conversation at first, but now I understand. Judith is talking about how inside seemingly incongruous things can become a big problem in a hurry. Like. The need to be friendly, but not friends.

[00:23:46] Bill Cleveland: Now I know what she wants to do. Where she was to take the novella. And once again, I'm really struck by her courage.

[00:24:03] Susan Robertson: NCCF is on indefinite lockdown following an inmate stabbing. Because of this, writing instructor Susan Robertson is working with her students through the bars of their cells. She approaches Mitch Reiser's cell.

[00:24:19] Susan Robertson: Mitch Reiser's voice broke into Susan's thoughts on violence and its effect on the mind and soul.

She walked past a few cells to where Mitch was housed. Huh. Are you psychic or what? How did you know it was me? Susan asked. Always on her guard with Mitch. She was never able to be herself with Mitch around. And Mitch was always around. There were so many silent ways in which Mitch made sure he was there. Always there.

[00:24:53] Susan Robertson: Mitch pointed to the small mirror that he could adjust to give him a reflection of just what was coming along the walkway. Susan [00:25:00] stepped back and looked at the other cells and saw that many such mirrors were now focused on her. She shook her head.

Susan Robertson:I’m a trained observer, but I'm not seeing anything well today.

Susan smiled.

This pairing with Mitch was easy, but dangerous. If she wasn't careful, he'd pick up whatever she said and run with it as far as he could.

[00:25:35] Susan Robertson: I can hear you fine.

[00:25:40] Susan Robertson: I don't wear perfume, she said, then thought, shit, he's trapped me. I've got to get out of this dialogue without one more personal exchange.

[00:25:54] Susan Robertson: Mitch, what poems are you going to read at the banquet?

[00:26:00] Susan Robertson: That's what I'm here for.

[00:26:05] Susan Robertson: Mitch!

[00:26:24] Susan Robertson: Okay, Mitch. That's it.

Never had the promise of flowers sounded so like a threat.

[00:26:34] Susan Robertson: Mitch whispered towards Susan's departing back, although she tried not to hear. She heard

[00:26:51] Susan Robertson: A bird had flown in through the open transom and was singing in the block. Susan focused on this bird. Its song made her [00:27:00] hear the weighted silence of the gray sky outside, the ocean water. She listened to these silent sounds that rode under her quickly beating heart, under all the noise in the block. She wanted to leave Unit 2, run back to the office and talk to Al about Mitch, but she decided to see the rest of her students first, and she walked down the tier as steady as she could.

This was a terrifying situation for Judith. And, because of the program, other women at Q, the rules, and a dozen other reasons, both paranoid and real, the incident could not be written off. Her conflict about reporting it up the chain of command only added to her distress. Her compassion in telling this difficult story in the nouvella is a testament to the enormous sense of responsibility she carried for each of her students.

Beyond the episode with Mitch, the North Coast story unfolds with other unsettling twists and turns, all of which are based on the true events chronicled in Judith’s research. In addition to the fatal stabbing and subsequent lockdown, there is a discovered tryst between a yoga teacher and a prisoner, a crippling state budget freeze, and most devastatingly for the arts program’s teachers, students and their families, the cancelation of the first-ever arts program banquet, which had been months in the making.

Despite the intensity of this string of events, Judith’s narrative is not overly dramatic, and pointedly so. This is because one of the most incongruent characteristics of prison life is the plodding drumbeat of hard-to-imagine juxtapositions — boredom and fear, cacophony and silence, bad news and no news. If the joint could talk, it would surely be shouting. “You think you caught us at a bad time? Nah, this is normal. You think this is crazy? Wait ‘til next week!”

As daunting as it might seem, Judith understands that her principal job here is as a translator — making some sense of a place where the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter would feel quite comfortably at home. A place where seemingly simple questions about the “right” thing to do are answered with alternating layers of clarity and quicksand. A place where the signs and signals we all depend on to find our way are offered up in a “Yes/But No” way, an oscillating current that is both confounding and oddly thrilling. Who else but an artist could render this world in a way that both attracts new creative colleagues and discourages the slakers? Her task is to convey the elusive truth of this foggy netherworld without scaring away the potential pathfinders.

[00:30:37] Susan Robertson: Truth. Everyone in this place was always so sure of his opinion, from Sam Randle to Dolores Mendoza to Roger Watson to Timothy Augustus. Susan moved through NCCF from one whole truth to the next and in the moving, everyone’s truth became part of some larger truth. It was this truth she herself was most interested in, although it was so large, she couldn't see it, didn't understand its shape. She felt she could never know prison, never understand harm to others or feelings of retribution or society's inequalities or spiritual evil or human greed or moral laziness or being a good soldier, without getting some glimpse of this larger picture into which it all fit.

She felt Timothy Augustus' observations about dominant white society were accurate, but they left out Sam Randle's ideas about individual responsibility.

She felt Sam Randle's ideas about individual responsibility were valid, but they left out Tall Tony's knowledge of how The System set things up so that the individual hardly had a chance.

She felt Tall Tony's knowledge was precise, but it left out Dolores Mendoza’s experience of becoming part of The System in order to break out of a past that wanted to limit her and her people.

She felt Dolores Mendoza's experience had much to teach. but it left out Woody sitting in his cell focusing. not on culture, but on the clear strain of a voice that could only be heard when all was quiet, a voice that asked him to be a channel for its words.

There was a larger picture, she was sure of it, but maybe she'd never see it whole, maybe she'd always be able only to listen to each person's story, each person's way of perceiving the world.

[00:33:21] Judith Tannenbaum: North Coast Correctional Facility, Music Room.

Then, this one brother walks in, picks up a box, and starts playing righteous progression’s, really fancy work. Gordon listens a while and then approaches the man and says, “Your playing is mighty fine, but this is a beginning guitar class.”

“Look, this is the first time I ever picked up a box, the man repeated. Thing is, I was locked up at Central State. I was in the hole for ten years. No guitar, no nothing. Then I got me a chord book, and made myself a keyboard out of cardboard, and just went through the book. Done with that one, I found myself another. Did that the whole time I was down, but this is the first time I'm hearing how it really sounds.”

In early 1990, eight boxes, each containing 20 copies of A Manual for Artists Working in Prison are delivered to the Arts in Corrections offices in Sacramento. The second page imprint reads, “ Published by Arts in Corrections --- Printed by the Prison Industry Authority (PIA). The PIA is one of dozens of prison “industries” operated by CDC using prison labor. Given the thousands of prisoners involved in Arts in Corrections, it is quite possible that some of them also took part in its printing.

By spring, all but a few copies of the Manual have been disseminated to California’s, now 18, prisons, where they are put to use orienting new artist’s (fish) swimming in from the outside.

Change the Story / Change the World is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. Special thanks to our cast on this show who are Amba Johnson as Judith Tannenbaum, Kathy Bentley as Susan Robertson, Brian Lee as Timothy Augustus, Alicia Amani as Kathy Johnson, and Michael Washington as the guitar student.

Thanks also to our stalwart regulars, particularly Judy Munsen, who has produced the extraordinary soundscape for this episode. Also our text editing by Andre Nnebe, our effects from freesound.org and our eternal inspiration, which rises up from the ever-present spirit of UKE 235. So, until next time, stay well, do good, and spread the good word.