Doing Time, Writing Lives: Refiguring Literacy and Higher Education in Prison

Doing Time, Writing Lives offers a much-needed analysis of the teaching of college writing in U.S. prisons, a racialized space that - despite housing more than 2.2 million people -remains nearly invisible to the general public. Through the examination of a college-in-prison program that promotes the belief that higher education in prison can reduce recidivism and improve life prospects for the incarcerated and their families, author Patrick W. Berry exposes not only incarcerated students’ hopes and dreams for their futures but also their anxieties about whether education will help them.

Beginning by exploring the need to move beyond narratives of hope when discussing literacy initiatives within prisons, Berry then illustrates how teachers and students frequently hold on to different beliefs about literacy and its power in the world. After discussing the possibilities and limitations of professional writing courses in prisons, the author argues that we need to pay greater attention to teachers and their motivations in prison education initiatives. Finally, he offers a case study of one formerly imprisoned student who uses writing in his current life and how this does (and does not) connect with what he learned in his prison education program.

Combining case studies and interviews with the author’s own personal experiences teaching writing in prison, Doing Time, Writing Lives chronicles how incarcerated students attempt to write themselves back into a society that has erased their lived histories. It challenges polarizing rhetoric often used to describe what literacy can and cannot deliver, suggesting more nuanced and ethical ways of understanding literacy and possibility in an age of mass incarceration.