I taught memoir writing in a men’s prison

Here is a chapter from a memoir-in-the-making from my writing teacher, Allison Langer.

Hi Friends,

This year, I plan on regularly sharing essays and memoir chapters from my writing peers and wonderful writers I happen to connect with on Substack.

Today’s chapter comes from my writing teacher at Writing Class Radio, Allison Langer. I’ve written about Allison and Writing Class Radio a lot because both have been such a strong influence and source of learning how to be a better writer and editor. I am so grateful I connected with Allison, who has been an invaluable part of my writing journey.

Allison is working on a memoir about her time volunteering and teaching writing at a men’s prison. There’s so much depth and layers to her story. I remember feeling surprised when I’d hear snippets of her past—like, damn, how did she manage to get through that? It’s truly the stuff that makes great memoirs. I don’t want to give too much away, but you’ll see what I mean in this scene.

(Reach out if you’re interested in sharing your story. Just leave me a comment.)

I asked Allison to set up the following scene for you:

Five years ago, I volunteered to teach memoir writing in a men’s prison in Florida. I wasn’t looking to change the world or to change anyone, really. I was nosy.

The gig sounded a little dangerous and cooler than anything else I’d done. I’d meet men who broke the law and hear their stories. I was sure I’d be teaching behind a glass barrier, like the ones I’d seen on crime shows.

Only, when I got there, there was no barrier. I sat in a room with 18 criminals. No guard; no co-teacher. Just me and them.

I Taught Memoir Writing in a Men’s Prison. I Went in Full of Judgment and Left Full of Love. 

As always on Tuesdays, I feel the excitement build throughout the morning. I organize and prepare the clear, zippered utility folder I bring with me. I check the printout, with my DOC PIN, allowing me to enter the institution. I replenish the folder with lined paper, pens, handouts.

I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat on the way home from prison and a big tumbler of ice water to drink in the car. Instead of remaining in pajamas or putting on workout clothes like usual, I look for an outfit that isn’t sexy and isn’t frumpy but is still feminine. I choose navy sweatpants, New Balance sneakers, and a gray Old Navy tee with writing on the front: Sunny days ahead. I make a note to buy cute prison clothes. 

It’s one of those typical 90-degree summer days in Miami. I put on a little make-up even though I rarely wear make-up. My eyeliner is subtle, just a little smear of dark gray on my upper lid. The mascara turns my blond eyelashes a rich black, a contrast to my light blue eyes. The first time I taught, I skipped it. I figured looking ugly would keep me safe. Now, five weeks in, I shake my head at the thought of Luis, E, Willie, or Swa trying to hurt anyone. Has prison changed them or has time?

I even add a little pink lip gloss. It seems deviant and fucked up that I am going through so much effort to look good for a group of prisoners: men I could neither touch nor hug nor date. Still, I want to look pretty. 

The drive to Dade Correctional Institution (DCI) is 45 minutes. On the way, I return phone calls or listen to This American Life. Today’s show is about loss. My mind goes right to Gerald. 

It has been three years since he died. I’ve moved on, right? So, why was there a stack of pictures on my nightstand (Us at the Standard Hotel in robes, another naked and covered in colorful mud; my 44^th birthday dinner at Joe’s Stone Crabs) and our last texts still on my phone? The text stream is what I use to remind me of the dick he’d become. 

Me: r u still planning on coming over tonight?

Gerald: yes…leaving the beach shortly & then watching the fight later with the boys. Kool?

We’d made a date to have dinner. The first date since our breakup months earlier. I knew he was using me for sex, but I was using him too. The difference was my heart was still in it. Life had been miserable without him. 

Gerald broke up with me on NYE after three years of dating. He was practically living with me and my three young kids. When he stood me up on the last day of the year, I wanted my world to end. I didn’t think I would be able to exist without him.

Our weekly secret sex nights at his apartment were what kept me alive. The only friend I told said I’d get hurt again, but I didn’t care. I was addicted to him. His attention made me feel like a queen: the most beautiful and special woman alive. I knew he would never commit to me. It was the 11-year age gap or because I was Jewish or that I was a single mother. He believed his Christian family wouldn’t approve, but I knew he loved me. I just knew. That he was going to fuck me then hang with his boys and pretend it was “kool” tweaked me.

Me: It doesn’t feel that cool. I’d rather pass.

Gerald: Very well. Tuesday is off as well?

Me: wow. I am speechless.

He called the next night, but I didn’t pick up. Two weeks later, he reached out again. I didn’t respond. Two weeks after that, he texted: Happy Mother’s Day. Didn’t respond to that either. Five days later, Gerald was dead. 

At his funeral, his girlfriend was introduced and asked to speak on Gerald’s behalf. 

Girlfriend? After two months? She stood up and reached for a chair to steady herself. She was clearly devastated. I could see why he chose her over me. I was 20 years older than her and not nearly as cute. Gerald and I dated for three years, and he never referred to me as his girlfriend. He refused to introduce me to his parents or include me in family dinners. Now, after just two months, this woman had elevated to the status I’d wanted.

“Gerald and I have been soul mates for nine months,” she said through tears and deep breaths.

As the words left her mouth, I wanted to vomit. He cheated on me? For months? I wanted to scream, “He cheated on you too,”  just so she and everyone there knew I was just as special.

I felt the urge to run out of the church, but I didn’t want to see the pity in his friends’ eyes. They knew and didn’t tell me. I get it. Their loyalty was to him. Now, nobody would care that he cheated.  The betrayal was nothing compared to the tragedy of what he’d done. Gerald didn’t leave a note or even a hint. Video cameras caught him getting in and out of his car for one hour before he made his decision. Nobody understood why a gorgeous, successful, loved 35-year-old man shot himself in the parking garage of his office building. 

After Gerald died, I got used to feeling nothing. Nothing was less painful than feeling his loss or being disappointed by another man. When I volunteered three years later to teach men in prison, I was still numb. 

When I get to the parking lot at Dade Correctional Institution, I am excited to see my guys and start writing. The slow process at the entrance is not unusual. I wait for my driver’s license to be scanned and my pin number to be approved. The corrections officer in charge is talking on the phone. I wait for 20 minutes shooing mosquitos, sweating my ass off, and watching a man in a prison uniform mow the grass. I look up at the clouds pretending not to gawk. I wonder what he did? How he got to this point in his life. 

No electronic devices or unapproved reading material is allowed in prison, so without a cell phone or a book, I’m impatient and dying to throw a tantrum. I know if I do, I’ll never get inside. 

“Langer,” I hear in a muffled whisper. My name is coming from inside the control booth. The officer points at the entry. 

 When the piercing sound of the door unlocks, I move inside to security. I am asked the usual standard series of questions, “Are you in possession of any firearms, electronic devices…. cash, drugs of any type, tobacco, or weapons….” As I listen and shake my head, I remove my belt, shoes, watch, keys, and sunglasses, plop them into the scanner, and walk through the metal detector. 

Finally, at 10:50 am, I am in the courtyard on the way to the education building. The 100-yard walkway is paved with a pedestrian lane off to the left-hand side; the mental health unit is at the end of the path. I walk in the middle, like the officers and the healthcare workers. The grass is neatly trimmed and free of dry patches. There isn’t a single tree on the compound.

The pale yellow and blue buildings look freshly painted. Today, I pass three men walking single file, each with ankle chains. They take tiny steps more like a jog than a walk. Each person has an officer holding his shackled wrists behind his back.

I’d been told by the other incarcerated guys how much they hate being asked, how are you? They want to scream, how the fuck do you think I am. 

So instead, as the men  near, I say, “Morning, gentlemen.” I wonder if anyone has called them gentlemen recently. I wonder how it feels to be chained and walked like an animal in front of a woman—how degrading and humiliating that must feel. I hope my words give them dignity.

There are fences and barbed wires separating the men in blue from the mental ward and the education building, where my students come to learn or enjoy the air conditioning. Even in Miami’s oppressive heat, you only get to cool off if you’re learning or mentally ill.

A guard checks the list for call out. He’s in no rush, often refusing to let the men pass just for the fun of it. When it rains, the men are always late. And wet. Today, they arrive with sweat-soaked shirts.

The classroom odor is both repulsive and comforting. The men greet me at the door, and I can smell their clothing: musty. I wonder if the scent lingers on my clothes when I leave. Still, I have the urge to hug my guys even though I’d been told not to. The chaplain said, “A handshake is ok but only if they offer.”

She did not say why hugs were not allowed, but I suspect it has to do with the obvious. Some guys may be triggered by being touched. Some may get off on the brief contact. But the not-so-obvious hits me: lack of touch deprives them of the biggest human right in the world: LOVE.             

When I enter the classroom, I take each hand held out to me and hold tight. I want them to know they matter to me, and that in my eyes they are not monsters or killers. They are human.

The men gather around me. They want to hear every detail of my week. They want to see the edits I’ve scribbled on their submissions. They seem riveted by every comment I make, repeating my words when they provide feedback to their peers. They tell me nobody else in their life believes in them like I do and that our friendship has become their only link to hope. One guy said, “You’re the first person who’s told me I can write.”

Before we get to the word of the day or the prompt or the published stories we study, I tell them how much I enjoyed the essays they sent home with me.

“They all contain blood,” I say. “That’s my way of showing you I care.” Blood is what they call my red editing pen. 

As I walk around and speak, some of the men hold my gaze a second too long. Those are the same guys who stay after class. I don’t think they all have crushes on me. Maybe one or two, but mostly, it feels like the guys just want a connection with someone who believes in them. I want that too. 

When I finish talking about the bloody edits, I glance around the room. All 17 men are staring at me. They came here today to learn from me. The attention makes me feel smart and important, emotions I rarely experience in my life outside prison, especially since Gerald. I enjoy prison. I’m happy here. 

In prison, I am in control. There is a physical barrier between any possibility of getting close to them. The men aren’t allowed to touch me, to call me, to email, to ask for anything. I like this barrier. My heart feels protected. I decide where our friendship goes and how much of myself I am willing to give. Nothing since Gerald has felt this good. Nothing. 

Last week, when Luis said, “Do you wear skirts a lot? Because you should.”

I wasn’t embarrassed I’d dressed up for prison. I told myself that having a woman dress up for them gives them dignity. But the truth is, Luis is hot. Incarcerated or not, I like his attention. Forty-nine is a difficult age for a woman, especially a sexual woman who likes younger men.

So, ugly may have been what I was going for the first time I went to prison, but now that I am a few weeks in, ugly is not what I go for.              

We go around the room, like usual, and the men say their names and words.

Rod: “Free.”

Barnett: “Rested.”

Willie: “Excited.”

Luis: “Happy.”

E: “Word.”

Allison: “Sweaty… but happy to be here.”

 “OK, guys. Let’s get started. Think about grounding the reader with who, what, when, and where. Write about the last time you laughed.”

 After 10 minutes, the men read. Willie goes first but hasn’t written more than a line or two. Pretty typical for Willie.

Then E raises his hand. E is not a big guy, but his calm, stoic wisdom provokes a respect I saw with very few men inside. 

During the last class of the semester, I give the men my most difficult writing tip: create a vulnerable narrator. I give the prompt that reveals just how much trust has developed: The Moment Everything Changed.  

Swa writes about the robbery that landed him in prison; Willie writes about the first time he shot a man. Luis writes about the traumatic stress of serving in the military. 

The sadness in the room is thick. I can’t hold back my tears, and E hands me a tissue. We go around the room for feedback.

have no idea what anyone is thinking. Are they judging? Am I judging? I expect myself to judge, to hate, to condemn, but I don’t. I feel sad—for the victims and for the guys. I also feel compassion and love. 

 I can see Swa 30 years earlier, plotting pranks, laughing in the schoolyard, and daring one another to kiss a girl. He’s now 45.

I see my kids in them. I see myself in the men too. I snatched penny candy from 7-11, skipped class, and borrowed my mom’s car when I was 15. My crimes were less severe, but so were my surroundings.

As I walk through the prison gate and out to my car, I feel a heaviness in my heart. I won’t see them until the next semester begins in a few weeks, and I hate leaving them behind.

The men were much smarter than I thought they’d be. They were curious and focused. They wanted to learn. They asked for homework—prompts to write to and essays they could study.

This inspired me to create better craft talks, spend more time editing their work, and challenge them to dig deep.

These men greeted me like I was the most important person in the world, and I became addicted to that feeling and to them. They climbed into the hole left by Gerald and gave my life meaning.

What I do with that meaning is now up to me.

About Allison

Allison Langer is a private writing coach, taught memoir writing in prison, and has been published in The Washington Post, Mutha Magazine, Scary Mommy, Modern Loss, NextTribe, Business Insider, and HuffPost. Her novel about wrongful conviction is on the shelf waiting for an agent.

These days, she is working on a memoir with her friend and inside student Clifton Jones (2-Tall). Her stories and her voice can be heard on Writing Class Radio, a storytelling podcast she co-produces and co-hosts, which in just eight years has been downloaded more than one million times.

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