Art and Mindfulness Behind Bars: Examples From Wyoming Prison-Based Courses on Memoir and Stoic Philosophy

Introduction: Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking in Prison Arts Programs

State prison administration-led correctional education programs generally focus on adult basic education and remain confined to literacy, vocational training, and high school equivalency as a result of constrained budgets and the prevailing punitive ethos among the general public steeped in tough-on-crime rhetoric (Brown & Rios, 2014; Carver & Harrison, 2016).

As part of a broader correctional shift toward “evidence-based practices” that achieve “effective outcomes,” correctional education programs face pressure to demonstrate efficacy and impact, using narrowly circumscribed criteria such as test scores, pass rates, and recidivism (Van Voorhis, 2012). The arts, which we broadly define as the theory and practice of creativity and critical thinking fostered by visual, written, and oral forms of self-expression, generally have no place in prison education programs’ approach to the mastery of basic academic skills.

Having spent years working together in the U.S. prison system, we understand that this approach to prison education is all too easy to critique from the standpoint of individuals who have the luxury of living and working at a university. Reading and otherwise engaging with and reflecting on the world of ideas and discussions about the human condition are all normal aspects of the relatively privileged lives enjoyed by university colleagues who rarely have to make decisions at a moment’s notice that will dramatically affect other people, fear for their personal safety, or see painfully negative depictions of their lives and means of making a living in superficial media reports. All of these realities are normal aspects of everyday life for those who work and live in the prisons where we have offered college courses for the past 3 years as part of our commitment to Wyoming Pathways from Prison, a free college-in-prison program.

In many ways, state-led correctional education systems take their cue from how underfunded public schools set and measure goals for their impoverished students. Often, these approaches form an “educational enclosure” closely resembling prison in its regimentation and focus on vocational training to the exclusion of creativity and intellectual development (Sojoyner, 2016). Such enclosures impose ideological limitations on disadvantaged students who are also more likely to face the school-to-prison-pipeline that is characterized by increased securitization measures—making public schools resemble prisons in ways demonstrated to increase tensions, enhance feelings of exclusion, and otherwise feel less safe (Mallett, 2016). Negative school experiences prior to incarceration are typical for many incarcerated persons, with poor academic performance one of the many by-products of parental disengagement and limited social support systems from an early age (Carrigan & Maunsell, 2014).

For many inmates, negative educational experiences are compounded by abusive caregivers or partners as well as structural racism, sexism, and classism (Brennan, Breitenbach, Dieterich, Salisbury, & Van Voorhis, 2012; Mageehon, 2003). The associated absence of socioeconomic supports and other forms of stability from a young age increases the likelihood of criminal justice system involvement that persists from youth into adulthood (Laub & Sampson, 2006). Policing and criminal justice practices, which result in longer, harsher postconviction sentences for those who cannot afford an attorney further contribute to higher incarceration rates among disadvantaged populations (Wacquant, 2009). Given how deeply rooted social problems manifest within the prison system, it is no surprise that prison education initiatives remain controversial.

Prison education detractors span a continuum from those who believe prison should be solely punitive to those who view the criminal justice system as bolstering a system of race-class-gender oppression. Prison–university partnerships that provide free, high-quality courses to incarcerated people prove troubling across this political spectrum because they confer benefits to individuals that their free world counterparts do not receive. Some of the most troubling critiques of prison–university partnerships are that they subsidize services that the state has a responsibility to provide, ignore felony conviction-related exclusions from employment and social mobility, benefit privileged prisoners rather than the most needy, and legitimize the prison industrial complex by diverting university resources into the criminal justice system (S. W. Davis & Michaels, 2015).

Prison education proponents contend that classes positively occupy prisoners while building skills that reduce their likelihood of returning to prison. Proponents often cite reduced recidivism rates as an outcome of prison education, sometimes by eliding the fact that recidivism rates are strongly correlated with socioeconomic status, length of incarceration, type of conviction, and postrelease support (Esperian, 2010). Communities become beneficiaries of prison education when ex-prisoners return as better parents, neighbors, and citizens with the increased self-control and self-efficacy that often accompanies improved critical thinking skills (Thomas, 2012; Wilson, Gonzalez, Romero, Henry, & Cerbana, 2010). Prison education has also been estimated to equal US$5 in savings, through lowered recidivism rates, for every dollar spent on education (L. M. Davis, Bozick, Steele, Saunders, & Miles, 2013).

The socioeconomic forces shaping prison life are indistinct from those in the free world and prison arts programs accordingly face many of the same critiques that they do in the free world. Arts programs are often the first casualties of budget cut-related reductions, relegating them to supplementary status vis-à-vis basic math, science, and reading skills. Critics of arts education contend that visual arts, literature, philosophy, and related fields do not readily translate into jobs and should be confined to private schools or universities where students pay for an education that includes these subjects. Proponents argue that the arts support critical thinking and self-development by fostering creativity and preparing individuals of any age to be more thoughtful and engaged human beings.

The prison equivalent of these arguments for and against arts education differs only in that the stakes are raised. Critics ask, why should prisoners have access to classes and programs that public school and university students often do not? How will the arts prepare prisoners to be gainfully employed citizens who are meaningful contributors to society? Proponents insist on the arts’ potential for personal transformation, particularly, through holistic approaches to education that prioritize all aspects of learning rather than just basic education. Prison teachers observe the improved emotional vocabulary the arts offer in settings that discourages positive self-expression (Erickson & Young, 2010), and how prison arts programming improves quality of life for prisoners and staff alike (Wilkinson & Caulfield, 2017).

Prison arts programs offer a variety of subjects, including philosophy (Self & D’Amico, 1983; Szifris, 2016), writing (Lucas, 2013; Maher, 2015), fine arts and art therapy (Barak, 2017; Brewster, 2015; Gussak, 2004), music and theater (Brewster, 2010; Browne, 2009), and reading groups (Billington, 2011; Sweeney, 2008). Yet, prison arts programs face struggles in a cultural climate that devalues arts education, leading critics to characterize such programs as benefiting those offering classes more than they benefit prisoners (Ruyter, 2017) and serving as little more than a form of “decorative justice” (Cheliotis, 2014). It is within this fraught context that Wyoming pathways from prison (WPfP) emerged as our state’s only college-in-prison program.

WPfP

We have all been variously involved in teaching, grant-writing, and other activities on behalf of WPfP, a collaboration between the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Department of Corrections. WPfP provides college courses to prisoners at no cost through generous volunteer support from University of Wyoming (UW) faculty, staff, and students. WPfP, like most college-in-prison programs, does this work because its members believe strongly in the power of education to transform lives both within and outside prison walls, by creating opportunities for skill-building, personal growth, and self-reflection. WPfP has central objectives in offering innovative approaches to college courses in one of the most politically conservative and rural states. WPfP’s first objective is to provide college courses at no cost to prisoners, which it accomplishes through a memorandum of understanding with two Wyoming community colleges. The second objective is to assist UW in fulfilling its land grant mission to serve the people of Wyoming through community engagement and facilitating access to equal educational opportunities for all. Third, WPfP mentors UW students as they develop teaching and leadership through closely supervised involvement as assistants in course design, teaching, technology, and other aspects of WPfP’s everyday functioning. The fourth objective is to provide UW students with valuable real-world experience through teaching and assistance to the Department of Corrections.

Since summer 2016, WPfP has offered 10 college courses taught by a combination of faculty, staff, and supervised students in person as well as by remote instruction. These courses, some of which have been offered multiple times, span a wide range of fields based on the availability of instructors. Yet, all are designed to help prisoners to build critical thinking skills and foster self-reflection through creative approaches to reading and writing. Two separate courses—“What Lies Within” and “Women in Society”—took gender-specific approaches to the physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences of women and men through engagement with nonfiction and fiction texts. “Social Work and Women’s Empowerment” introduced social work practices as they pertain to women’s lives and structural positions in social systems. “Tutorial Instruction” mentored incarcerated women in the fundamentals of educational tutoring so they can support their peers who are working toward high school equivalency, vocational development, or becoming better writers and thinkers. “Financial Literacy” focused on planning for life after release from prison, including personal finance and budgeting, managing bank accounts, credit cards and loans, building and maintaining good credit, obtaining affordable housing, and career planning. An on-campus course at UW worked closely with students in the College of Education to develop courses for use in prison that included Literacy Engagement for Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, American and Wyoming Government, Introduction to English, and Introduction to Women’s Studies.

Although WPfP courses are in many ways restricted by instructor availability and institutional limitations such as prison classroom space, extensive travel distances, and scheduling, all are informed by an approach to transformative learning that prioritizes arts-based methods whenever possible. Transformative learning is a process by which instructors encourage adult students to question previously assimilated assumptions, beliefs, values, and perspectives as a means to guide future actions in positive ways (Taylor & Cranton, 2012). Transformative learning encourages adult students to share experiences and resources to create new knowledge and so requires an awareness of the path one took to his or her current life circumstances (Cranton, 2016). This style of learning encourages self-reflection in ways that prompt learners to gain confidence in their abilities to change sociolinguistic and psychological “habits of mind” through critical interpretation and application of ideas, experiences, and perspectives related to learning (Mezirow, 1991).

In this self-reflective piece, we critically engage with our experiences using arts-based and mindfulness practices with incarcerated people and university students who have volunteered to assist WPfP. We focus in particular on two classes, both of which we have offered on multiple separate occasions: “Introduction to Stoic Philosophy and Its Practical Applications” and “Telling My Story: Voices from the Wyoming Women’s Center.” The experiences of all concerned in these two classes emphasized the power of arts-based and mindfulness education to transform lives, both within and outside prison walls.

Case Study 1: Introduction to Stoic Philosophy and Its Practical Applications

During the summers of 2017 and 2018, WPfP and the University of Wyoming’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies collaborated on a week-long Introduction to Stoicism course that was provided to approximately 75 inmates across three correctional facilities in Wyoming. The philosophy of Stoicism was explored through discussion, reflection exercises, and a final capstone assignment that proved to be impactful to both inmates and instructors.

What Is Stoicism?

Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BCE, and eventually became one of the most prominent philosophies of the ancient Mediterranean world. It became particularly influential during the Roman Empire, and several prominent historical figures were self-proclaimed Stoics, such as Cato of Utica, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Another important figure, although not so prominent in political history is Epictetus, whose works survive to this day. The Stoics emphasized philosophy as a way of life not just an academic subject, intending their philosophical principles for use as guides to living well.

Three core principles relevant to our discussion form the foundations of Stoic Philosophy. First is the idea that the goal of life is to live in agreement with nature, which is, of course, highly dependent on a conception of both human nature and of nature writ large. The second principle is that some things are up to us and some are not up to us, meaning that our opinions, impulses, and attitudes are within our control, but nearly everything else is beyond our control. The final principle we want to highlight is that virtue—defined as wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice—is the only good, and vice the only evil. Everything else is “indifferent.”

Stoicism’s influence continues today through a resurgent interest across the English-speaking world evident in the rise of groups studying Stoicism, individuals attempting to live by its principles, and by the success of a number of trade press books about it. Examples include The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday, which has had influence in the worlds of business and professional sports, and Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic, which began its life as a New York Times blog. Ancient Stoicism combined its core principles with several exercises designed to help apply those principles to individual lives. So, in addition to its contemporary resurgence, Stoicism has also inspired techniques and approaches in psychotherapy, especially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational-emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), both of which are commonly applied in correctional settings.

The Course Itself

We chose Stoicism as a topic because it allows for the development of beneficial skills and, unlike some other college philosophy topics, we anticipated it would resonate well with inmates interested in knowledge for its own sake as well as its practical application. We also chose it because it was something that could be treated in a relatively self-contained manner, given the logistical difficulties of working in a correctional environment. Stoicism and philosophy more generally are especially well-suited to developing core skills such as reading, writing, and critical thinking. It introduces students to difficult reading material by allowing them to work through it with more experienced instructors who can help guide their understanding. Writing assignments required the inmates to reflect on their own experiences and relate them to the texts and ideas of the class, while navigating challenging philosophical concepts throughout discussions and written assignments fostered critical thinking.

The course has now been provided to inmates at three Wyoming correctional facilities, following similar programming for each. The instructional group comprised of UW philosophy faculty and students visited each facility for a week of on-site classes. Three-hour class sessions were held for two different groups of inmates each day, with 12 to 16 students in each section. A typical class session included student reflections on the previous day’s assignment, group readings, and both large and small group discussions. Having multiple people in the instructional group allowed for the class to break into small groups for more intimate discussions, giving everyone a chance to share their thoughts. Daily assignments asked students to write reflections on topics such as what is truly in our power, the practices of Stoic mindfulness and simplicity, Stoic action, and viewing oneself as part of a larger whole. At the end of the week, the students were given a final written assignment that would require them to compare and contrast their past or current selves to an imagined self who follows Stoic principles. Once the week on-site was completed, we used remote conferencing technology to offer two additional online sessions to answer student questions and discuss potential lasting impacts. Course materials provided at no costs to inmates included Epictetus’s Handbook, Marcus Aurelius’s Mediations, and a specially developed workbook containing exercises for writing and reflection.

An Example of a Classroom Discussion

During each classroom period, we spent the majority of our time carefully reading passages from the texts in large and small group setting. The students took turns reading passages or portions of larger passages aloud, while the other members followed along. The purpose of reading the texts in this way is to facilitate learning via auditory, visual, and motor modalities, and to encourage careful reading of these somewhat difficult texts. We would then discuss what the passage means and what the student takes from it, with instructors adding context as appropriate. To give a better idea of how this worked in practice, consider the following passage from Marcus Aurelius:

Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people. They are subject to all these defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad. But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is the wrong; and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own—not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine—I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him. (Meditations, 2.1)

In this passage Marcus refers to the Stoic practice of preparing for quotidian events by imagining them ahead of time, including the inevitability of meeting all sorts of troublesome people. This reminder is not merely a case of negative or pessimistic thinking as Marcus also provides tools to deal with such situations, specifically by noting two things that people act badly because they do not know any better, and that we are social creatures who depend on one another. This feature is part of what it means to be human, and all of those troubling people we might meet during the day are just as human as we are. Given that, Marcus explains, it is our duty to work with others, even those who are confused or ignorant about how they are supposed to act.

Inmates in our class found this to be a very important passage, and all of them instantly identified with the inevitability of meeting with difficult people on a constant basis; many of them observed that “meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable” characteristics are commonplace in prison’s close quarters. What seemed to be a new discovery to many of them, however, was that there were options as far as what sort of attitude one might have toward such people and interactions with them, particularly with respect to conflict. Inmates had no problem identifying troublesome people and problematic interactions. Yet, most of them tended to respond by dismissing or avoiding those troublesome people altogether (although some took a more aggressive approach). Reading Marcus offered the alternative of recognizing that others are our kin, and we are all part of the same whole—even in a prison.

An Example of a Daily Written Assignment

The students had a daily written assignment to reflect on a given idea or ideas in the context of their own past, present, or future lives. A sample assignment featured the practice of stoic mindfulness. While the term “mindfulness” is used in contemporary psychology to describe self-awareness practices often based on Buddhism, the ancient Stoics had a similar practice. Below we include an excerpt from the assignment as students received it:

Epictetus says that we should train ourselves to avoid rashness, errors in our judgments and being “carried away” by our thoughts and feelings. For Stoics, the key error of judgment that we make, as we’ve seen, lies in treating external things as if they were intrinsically good or bad, and forgetting that virtue is the only true good. The key to retaining our grip on objective reality and not being swept away by irrational desire or emotions is that before we even begin to challenge our thoughts, we must learn to step back from them temporarily.

One famous quotation from Epictetus puts this so well that it is still taught to clients in cognitive therapy today: “It is not the things themselves that disturb people but their judgments about those things.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion, 5).

One of the simplest ways of responding to troubling impressions when you spot their early warning signs is simply to postpone doing anything in response to them. Modern researchers have found that this can reduce the frequency, intensity, and duration of worry episodes by about 50% on average. Epictetus gave very similar advice to his Stoic students, nearly 2,000 years ago. He says when we spot initial troubling impressions, especially if they seem overwhelming, we should gain time and respite by reminding ourselves that these are just thoughts and waiting a while until we have genuinely calmed down before thinking about them any further, or deciding what action to take.

You have already started monitoring your thoughts, actions, and feelings, and distinguishing between things under your control and things not. From this point onward, try to catch the incipient signs of strong desires or upsetting emotions. Pause to give yourself thinking space and gain psychological distance from your initial impressions. If your feelings are particularly strong or difficult to deal with, postpone thinking about them any further until you have had a chance to calm down, which may be during your evening meditation practice. Then, try asking yourself the following three questions:

Inside Students’ Responses

The assignment above has three central points for the students to consider: distinctions between what is under our control and what is not, what a perfectly wise and virtuous person would think and do in the situation, and one’s own strengths for dealing with the situation. They were often quite successful in applying these ideas to specific situations in their lives; yet, they varied in their abilities to comprehend and apply these central points. The first example is from an attempt to apply the concept of what is under our control:

I will get home as soon as possible, and if not I will be there eventually anyway. For we are as leaves in the wind, coming and going and yet ever prevalent in nature. Knowing this I should not be anxious, not worrying about the externals that can come to fruition, such as random cell searches, potentially finding paraphernalia. All things happen as they will, and is once again entirely out of my control.

This individual understands the Stoics’s claim that only our opinions, impulses, desire, and aversions are under our control, but is less successful on the role of “externals” such as getting out of prison.

The next example is perhaps under developed, but hits on all aspects of the assignment in a fairly clear manner:

Me not being about to get through to my daughter via telephone, which is upsetting, is not under my control, because I cannot make them answer the phone. So I have to accept this fact. A perfectly wise and virtuous person would not let this situation affect them because they would be truly indifferent and they would know it’s not under their control. Nature has given me patience, the ability to comprehend situations, understanding, and a strong will to not give up and let this situation keep me from continuing to try to be part of my daughter’s life.

The final example is from probably the most successful student in the class:

I need to be thoughtful of those basic ideas and concepts which form the foundation of Stoicism. Essentially, that my opinions, impulses, desires and aversions are my own, and all else is out of my control. This is where I must start, as setting goals within the scope of what I control is the only way that I can guarantee myself those outcomes which I most desire. Simply speaking, I am unable to control whether or not I am successful in starting, operating, and sustaining a business, but what I am able to control is my intent to do these things. So I must first accept the fact that any outcome is possible, and embrace whatever may come as a part of nature and its grandeur. I must also align my opinions, impulses, desires and aversions with the four virtues. Then, and only then, am I able to approach the task of starting a business with any assurance of meaningful progress.

This student clearly articulates the distinction at play in his own terms and as applied to the specific example he is discussing.

Final Paper Assignment

For their final assignment, we asked the participants to write an essay applying the Stoic ideas we had been studying to their own lives. This assignment asked them to compare and contrast one’s past or present self with the person one might envision oneself becoming through the practice of Stoic principles and concepts. Students were provided with a series of questions to assist them in completing this task. Has learning about Stoic principles and concepts allowed you to see things about yourself (either now or in the past) that you had not seen before? How do you envision yourself applying Stoic principles and concepts toward your future growth and development? How might you see yourself applying Stoic principles and concepts to future challenges you could encounter? Are there any specific passages from Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus that have been particularly useful in thinking about your past, present, or future selves? If so, which passages and how have they been useful?

The assignment required students to identify specific Stoic virtues, principles, and concepts, and connect them appropriately to each other and to their own ideas and examples.

These final papers were thoughtful and filled with deep self-examination, and what follows are several excerpts from this final assignment. The first excerpt comes from a female inmate who was initially quite resistant to the Stoic ideas being presented in the class; given her resistance, her grasp of the central ideas was remarkable:

I have always felt the need to be in control, as I knew it. I worked very hard to make sure life happened as I thought it should . . . I believed I needed to be in control. . . Instead of allowing things to happen as they happen, and accepting it, I was fighting a losing battle. I believe by using stoic principles, that I can make better use of life’s occurrences that are set before me. For example, if the car won’t start, I can enjoy another cup of coffee while I’m waiting for my ride . . . How I react to the different scenarios is my choice.

The next excerpt is from a young woman prisoner serving on a relatively short sentence and who was very intrigued by the Stoic texts:

No matter what I’m going through, or struggling with these books always seem to help me better accept and understand how to handle each unique experience. . . often times I’m presented with opportunities to argue, or insist my perspective on a situation, and I do not speak, I observe and understand that I seek to gain nothing by being correct and voicing my opinion whether it be right or wrong arguing is an unnecessary action. . . I am working on keeping both of my feet in the here and now, not the future or the past just here and now, and I’ve been able to completely rid myself of anxiety, worry and fears, I’ve found inner peace and contentment with my current situation.

The next excerpt is from a male inmate who is quite candid about his view of his past self, and also about his hopes for a future that makes good use of the Stoic virtues:

My past self was as far from Stoic as I feel like a human could be. . . I would dig a hole and bury myself if that is what it took to possess that which I wanted, stubborn and selfish to the end. . . Had I lived with the Stoic Virtues my path would have most definitely been a straighter path, as well as a much more productive life.

For our final selection, we wish to return to a prisoner whose analysis was always clear and writing excellent. Here he expresses his hopes for how using Stoic ideas can change his future.

My examination of self has yielded a tremendous amount of insight into the error in my (previous) ways, and more importantly the overwhelming progress that can be made by simply adopting a Stoic attitude in my approach to day-to-day life. While I do not expect perfection of myself, I do believe that even the tiniest application of these concepts and philosophieswillofferanenrichmentoflifeforwhichIamalreadyeternallygrateful.And now that I have nothing more to say I will take Marcus’ suggestion and conclude this “ . . . talk of what a good [person] should be, (and) simply be one!” (Meditations10.16)

These are but a few examples of the deeply moving and self-reflective work on Stoic mindfulness done by prisoners reflecting on how they might situate themselves in their own lives and the world. It was clear from our follow up remote sessions that Stoicism continued to positively affect their lives.

Case Study 2: Memoir

During summer 2016 and 2018, WPfP offered a memoir course cotaught by UW faculty and students at the state’s only prison for women. This course involved 3 weeks of collaborative work between UW instructors and 30 students incarcerated at the women’s prison to draft, revise, and prepare original work for publication. In memoir, a unique storytelling form, a writer’s experiences take center stage as she recounts a series of events that played a formative role in her life. Each class included substantial discussion of assigned excerpts from published memoirs by women as well as time for incarcerated women in the class to develop and receive supportive feedback on their works-in-progress.

The Power of Personal Narrative

There is a long-standing feminist tradition of regarding storytelling as a powerful modality through which those who have historically been silenced and oppressed by structural violence.

This tradition emerged from the premise that women have been written out of history for generations and continue to be excluded from full citizenship through socioeconomic and political inequalities that result in numerous forms of structural and interpersonal violence. Personal narratives by women actively and powerfully resist these forms of violence by giving voice to women’s experiences, often in ways that reveal systematic ways in which gender acts as a governing, and sometimes extremely harmful, force in everyday life. As a political act, memoir shifts the locus of power and authority away from a privileged minority who has access to the bullhorn of publishing and, in so doing, toward a more holistic view of social problems as they are experienced by those most impacted by them. As a tool for personal growth and self-reflection, memoir gives writers—as well as their readers—space to engage with the trajectories of their lives on their own terms in ways that offer tremendous potential to positively reframe key events and core aspects of identity.

Memoir is a particularly powerful tool for incarcerated women, who are far more likely than their free world peers to have experienced severe and persistent forms of structural and interpersonal violence, including abuse in all forms—intergenerational poverty, permanent child custody loss, limited formal education, and intersectional harms associated with sexism, classism, and racism. These forms of violence inform the choices they made prior to coming to prison and often continue to inform their worldviews in ways that restrict their abilities to self-actualize and lead independent lives. Critical reflection on the processes involved in reading and writing memoirs fostered self-awareness for incarcerated women as they reflected on their reactions to other women’s memoirs, their own work, and readers’ interpretations of both in class.

The Course Itself

The course syllabus included two sets of readings for students to maximize learning outcomes and ensure a mutually respectful classroom experience among students both incarcerated and not. UW is a public land grant institution with a nearly universal acceptance rate and this democratic approach to education means that many UW students who received college credit for coteaching this course had firsthand knowledge of economic hardship, the low-wage ghetto of service sector work, and, for some UW students, their own or a loved one’s experiences with the criminal justice system. Wyoming has a total population of just 500,000 people, which meant that many of the UW and incarcerated students had attended the same schools, knew some of the same people, and otherwise shared a common culture. Yet, having had similar life experiences and a shared culture is by no means equivalent to firsthand knowledge of the totalizing impacts that accompany serving time in prison. This fact necessitated that UW students receive additional preparation and training prior to entering the women’s prison on the first day of class. This included an intensive 1-day workshop led by colleagues at the Wyoming Department of Corrections on the importance of adhering to all policies governing interactions between prisoners and volunteers; this proved to be an essential component of maintaining appropriate boundaries in a course that encouraged women to reflect on their lives. UW students also read 12 articles by leading researchers on women’s criminal justice system involvement to familiarize themselves with common issues facing incarcerated women. Engaging with this academic work helped to ground the UW students’ work in the prison within their own professional goals, which included entering the fields of public interest law, social work, and teaching.

Incarcerated students received a course-pack of 15 excerpts from women’s published memoirs, which UW students and faculty worked together to carefully compile as a means to represent a wide variety of women’s experiences. Our class opened with a discussion of an excerpt from Carolyn Heilbrun’s celebrated Writing a Woman’s Life, in which the author critically reflects on women’s memoir as a genre that struggles against dominant sociocultural expectations for women. We then devoted each subsequent class to reading lengthy excerpts from 13 women’s memoirs, spanning a wide array of identities and experiences: Dorothy Allison’s Trash: Stories by Dorothy Allison, Jenny Lawson’s Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, Mary Crow Dog’s Lakota Woman, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Elinore Pruitt Stewart’s Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Mary Karr’s Lit: A Memoir, Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth, and Paisley Rekdal’s The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee. We intentionally restricted our reading of incarcerated women’s writings to address a wide range of topics that affect women, yet it seemed important to provide examples of published works written by women in prison, which we assigned in the form of short stories written by Bonnie Jean Foreshaw, Careen Jennings, Kathleen Wyatt, Robin Ledbetter, and Lynne Friend, while they were incarcerated at a Connecticut prison and featured in Wally Lamb’s I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison.

An Example of a Classroom Discussion

Each of our 12 classes taught over the course of 3 weeks took a fourfold structure. We first discussed our reactions to the memoir excerpt assigned for the day, analyzing the narrative structure, tone, and approach chosen by each author. Next, everyone present in the classroom completed an impromptu writing assignment using a prompt written on the whiteboard and provided as a means for everyone to experiment with a range of writing styles. Those who were particularly proud of their impromptu writing assignments then would volunteer to read them aloud, which helped to build camaraderie and foster a collaborative spirit. The third portion of each class featured women inmates sat in pairs to work closely on editing and carefully considering stylistic choices. As the class progressed into the second week, it took on a fourth component in which incarcerated women read their work in front of the class and listened to comments from peers.

The class was indisputably energized from the outset by the option that students had to publish some version of their finished work using a name of their choice. Incarcerated women quickly began to refer to this project as “our book,” a phrase that everyone quickly adopted and which cemented an extraordinarily positive sense of collaborative purpose among all present to support one another in completing the best possible final project. ¹ Reactions to assigned memoirs were extraordinarily varied, with incarcerated women sometimes relating quite profoundly to the experiences of women whose lives differed significantly from their own. On the first day of class, one woman who was serving a life sentence nodded approving at the list of assigned readings and stated, to the approval of her peers, “Thank you for not asking us to read Orange is the New Black. We already know all about being women in prison.” In response, another incarcerated student noted that, “It was good that we got to read the stories women prisoners wrote for Wally Lamb’s book, because that way we know that we can write like that too.”

Incarcerated women spoke passionately and at length about how deeply they empathized with experiences shared in memoirs authored by women from extremely privileged backgrounds, some of whom UW faculty and students had initially hesitated to assign out of concerns that their work might alienate incarcerated women. The opposite proved to be true in two notable instances. Oxford-educated economist Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave, in which the author recounts the loss of her husband and children during a tsunami that took place when she was vacationing with her family in Sri Lanka, prompted thoughtful discussions about grief, loss, and coping mechanisms used to deal with both. Former Vogue writer and highly successful author Joan Didion’s account of her husband’s death and daughter’s life-threatening illness likewise fostered self-reflection among incarcerated women as well as the UW students. “Those two have everything,” one incarcerated student noted, “and it was really brave for them to write about losing things that money can’t buy.”

Writing prompts, which comprised the third section of each class before the one-on-one writing sessions, ranged from highly descriptive exercises to prompts that encouraged students to experiment with particular writing styles. In one example, everyone present in our classroom had 15 min to think of a person close to us and then vividly describe a room decorated to represent all facets of their character. In another, we attempted to write as evocatively as possible with the use of comparisons or adjectives, forcing us as writers into making choices that we might not otherwise pursue in our writing. From the second week onward, each class ended with readings of the incarcerated women’s works in progress and constructive critical feedback from the class as a whole.

An Example of the Writing as it Evolved Throughout the Semester

The final versions of the women’s writings covered a range of topics, but all focused on subjects that were emotionally challenging for both the writers and their readers. This is significant given that during every class the two UW faculty leaders emphasized that the women had complete freedom to choose any subject to explore. The Wyoming Department of Corrections’ sole—and very reasonable—limitation on subsequent published materials was that we remove minors’ names. The published version of work produced during the 2016 class interspersed the incarcerated students’ writings with pieces by the UW students who participated in the class. These pieces included a photo-essay by an aspiring photographer, a self-reflective piece on the role of memoir in prison by an MFA student, an article on how education reduces recidivism by a doctoral student, a self-reflective piece by a UW student who had spent time in jail, and an essay by a law-school-bound student about how spending 3 weeks in prison working intensively with the women who changed her life forever by pushing her toward a career as a public defender. One essay was co-authored by a UW student and an incarcerated woman serving a multidecade sentence in which they explored the parallel developments in society and in their lives as individuals of a similar age and with a shared set of experiences marked by one important difference—one went to prison at age18 and the other went to college.

Essays by the women spanned a continuum from highly detailed accounts of a woman’s individual experiences to more abstract forms of engagement with the socioeconomic systems that shaped their lives. When taken together in our classroom setting and in published form, both approaches provided exceptionally valuable insights into incarcerated women’s shared sets of experiences as well as their differences. Some women recounted the events that surrounded their individual arrests, trials, and incarceration and associated sea changes to their personal lives, thereby offering powerful accounts of how a single woman experienced the criminal justice system as a whole. Other women engaged directly with the criminal justice system as a particular type of socioeconomic structure characterized by rigid hierarchies ill-equipped to address the deeply rooted inequalities so often experienced by those incarcerated within it. Still others examined the various forms of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse they suffered as individuals through the lens of widespread interpersonal and structural violence against women.

The women’s accounts of abuse, addiction, intergenerational struggles with poverty and associated social problems, social services oversight, and loss in almost every conceivable form also demonstrated tremendous resilience and hope for the future. Rather than reading as a litany of suffering, their memoirs offer numerous lessons for readers and were often written with this very intention; as one woman plainly stated, “I want to tell other women, don’t be like me. Don’t let some man run you around until you end up in here.” Yet, their stories must not be read as cautionary tales directed at their free world peers, as indicated by the frequent use of humor, sweeping narrative arcs, and sometimes masterful engagement with the slippery essence of the human spirit. One notable example, written by a woman serving a life sentence, focuses on her efforts to find and keep a job that pays a living wage to support her children, all while managing a series of relationships with intimate partners who often betray her trust. Her lengthy account of her life, which included no involvement with the criminal justice system until an arrest for murder late in her life, deeply engages the reader in her struggles before ending with a single unforgettable sentence: “I know I shot and killed my husband sometime that day. . .I have never denied that and I turned myself in.”

The sheer scope of the women’s writing defies easy categorization, a fact that underscores the important role that memoir can play in transformative education with incarcerated women. UW faculty and students also ended the class feeling personally transformed by the work they helped to facilitate behind prison walls, as we hope that readers of the women’s published work will feel similarly moved and inspired. Yet, the most compelling evidence of memoir’s potentially transformative power comes from the women themselves.

Prisoners’ Responses

Incarcerated women who participated in our class gave verbal and written evaluations designed to improve future iterations of the class. They spoke freely and openly as a result of WPfP’s established relationship with the women’s prison, knowing that their insights are valued and assist in building further college in prison initiatives. Responses to the course fall into three general areas that emphasize its practical value in building writing skills, the transformative aspects of fostering self-reflection, and the energizing boost of confidence it created among the women to further their education or otherwise engage in pursuits they regard as intellectually and emotionally fulfilling. Here, we include brief excerpts from the women’s written evaluations of the class to demonstrate, in their own words, how the experience benefited them.

Women who emphasized the course’s practical value emphasized its skill-building aspects with respect to critical thinking, writing, revision, communication, and public speaking, all of which were core components of our class’ fourfold structure. However, they often did so in ways that did not neatly separate intellectual development from personal growth; as one woman put it, “you have given me the courage to speak about my story. This class gave us the skills to move forward. I know that I’m blessed to be part of this group of strong and talented women.” She situates the knowledge and skill set gained in our class within a holistic view of herself as connected to other women working together to help each other flourish.

Women who noted the transformative aspects of self-reflection fostered by our course emphasized how they felt they had become better versions of themselves through their participation in the class. “I’ve not only become a better writer, “one woman succinctly noted, “but I’ve also gotten to know myself better.” For some women, this transformation entailed envisioning themselves as leaders who could inspire other women to change their lives in positive ways. Older women who expressed that they had resigned themselves to having little to no beneficial impact on others noted that writing their stories helped them to reframe their perspective. In one older woman’s words,

I would have never thought that anyone would learn from me. Look at me: I’m in prison. . . I hope young girls read my story, learn from me, and avoid prison. I hope they read my story and realize I could have avoided prison. I hope they take my advice so they too can avoid prison. If a man hits you, he will always hit you. Leave the first time he hits you; it’s not going to get better. Leave before you lose yourself and your freedom. Learn from me!

It is not our intention here to place incarcerated women in the problematic role of negative examples that people in the free world should study to avoid the same fate. Clearly, some women did find tremendous value in the potential of their stories to help others avoid relationships, choices, and circumstances that led them to prison.

Other women noted that our class inspired them to pursue more forms of self-development and intellectual growth, particularly by helping them to see their capabilities to succeed. Women reported feeling energized by the experience, with one poignantly noting that “this experience has given me back my life and joy. I’m so blessed to receive an education.” For almost all of the women, this class was their first encounter with college, a fact made even more meaningful given that a number of the women had received their high school equivalency while incarcerated and reported extremely negative experiences with education. Situating knowledge within experience through memoir proved to be an exceptional means by which women could comfortably confront, in a supportive and collegial setting, the multiple forms of violence that have framed life for the vast majority of incarcerated women.

Concluding Thoughts

Our detailed case study accounts of how arts-based courses in philosophy and memoir supported transformative learning among women and men incarcerated in Wyoming state prisons demonstrates how such classes can have a profoundly positive and long-lasting impact in prison settings. Contrary to criticisms that dismiss arts education in both prison and the free world as a “luxury” for students who can afford to attend private schools and universities, we have shown that the arts are an essential component of critical thinking and self-reflection.

Prison arts programs directly contest the increasingly market-driven model of education (and the class and academic apartheid undergirding it) by providing some of the most marginalized individuals with the tools to flourish through a holistic approach to the human condition.