Saturday, May 17, 2008
A writing teacher who works with juveniles sees familiar pain in the diary of Eric Harris.
Oct 4, 1999 | Last week I read excerpts of Eric Harris' diary in Salon. The week before I read the essays and poems and letters of young men doing time in my local juvenile hall. This week, next week, the week after, I will read more of these young men's writing and will, as always, be struck by how complex they are and how their words can tell us everything and nothing about how they feel and who they are.
I am confident, at least as confident as anyone can be, that the 20 or so young men who give me their writing for a juvenile hall newsletter are not capable of terrible, terrible violence. Eric Harris is still a complete mystery to me. But his writing is familiar and haunting.
Every Friday night, I spend a couple of hours teaching, coaching, cheerleading, bribing -- essentially doing whatever it takes to inspire young men in detention to write something for the newsletter, which circulates to other juvenile halls in the area. We -- I and the other workshop leaders -- assure the writers: Spelling doesn't count. Poetry doesn't have to have "thou" or "'tis" to be real poetry. Use your own voice. Write your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your memories, your hates, your truths. Write what's on your mind.
The young men in the hall write free verse about their mothers, their children (at 17, many of them already are fathers) and family -- exalting in the good times with June-moon-spoon types of rhymes. Often, they write laugh-out-loud raps. They tackle a current political situation with the most thoughtful street analysis. They give heartfelt advice to others who are incarcerated, give voice to their dreams of a better life and make poignant vows to leave the vida loca.
Look thru my eyes and see the want; The want to change, but not knowing how to do so. The want to be something other than a statistic, a number, a felon. The want to become a better decision maker for myself, my family, my race Yet somehow I feel trapped in the hands of time, Replaying the same tune like an old record that skips. Trapped.
They can be meticulous in their descriptions of past crimes, enlarging and romanticizing themselves. They are the Robin Hoods of their 'hoods. Their poetry, in particular, can run its cold finger down my spine. It goes unflinchingly into the void:
It's not the thought of dying. It's the thought of being dead. That's the fatal thought I dread. The thought of living underground for eternity. The thought of living underground. With no one to remember me.
"Are you really feeling this way?" I asked Jason, the boy who wrote the poem.
"Sure," he said.
"Really really?"
"Naw," he said. "I'm doing all right."
I wonder. I worry. These young men seem to change week by week, sometimes minute by minute. I am often left questioning what's real and what they put down for shock value. I don't know sometimes if these young men know the difference between the two. They can follow a poem about death with a love letter so gushy and hopeful that I almost blush reading it.
As I look at you from head to toe,
I can tell there's something about you that people don't know.
As I dream of your body next to mine
I still can tell there's something about you that people don't know.
As I dream of rubbing your body down with the sweetest oil
I still can tell there's something about you that people don't know.
As I dream of you kissing me and me kissing you
I still can tell there's something about you that I don't know.
Over time, I have gotten used to their contradictions. They have the remarkable ability to hold fast to two opposing realities with equal passion. The Latino kids write proudly of their commitment to brown pride. They make serious political points about how difficult it is to be a person of color in white America. Then, they end their idealistic pleas for solidarity with vows to "kill every Norteqo." When I point out that the last time I checked, Norteqos also had brown skin, they look at me as if I am nuts. But maybe, just maybe, it makes a dent.
I remember one boy, blue-eyed and quick with the one-liners. On occasion, he wrote a line or two about white power, which made me squirm with discomfort. Still, I couldn't help but enjoy being around him each week. He was so smart and crackled with energy. One night, I saw him looking at me, carefully studying my frizzy brown hair and the map of the shtetl on my face. "You Jewish?" he asked. I took a chance -- You have to choose your "teaching moments" carefully around here -- and told him. "Yes, full-blooded as far back as anyone can remember." I prepared myself for the reaction: taunts, jeers, a cold silence?
I wasn't prepared for a cheer. "My mother is Jewish!" he announced proudly to the entire group. Then he raised a fist into the air: "Dreydl power!"
I figured he was putting me on. He wasn't putting me on. The following week when I brought him a dreydl, he taught his Latino buddies to play "this cool Jewish gambling game."
And just when I think I've heard every possible, convoluted prejudice, someone like Jeremy, a 17-year-old who has been in and out of the hall for years, gets creative. Jeremy is one of the really fine, write-from-the-gut poets in the group. When things are slow and no one else is writing, I can always count on him to whip up a rhyming couplet or two. Last week, he handed me his latest epic:
I want to express how I feel about people changing the English language. People who say "Wolfin" [slang for lying] and other stupid words like that really piss me off. It's the stupidest word I ever heard. People that can't talk right really piss me off.
Harris, too, seemed to have a thing against people who misused English, like those who said "pacific" for "specific." It's almost bizarre how intolerance falls into predictable, and mundane, categories.
"So what do you think of my article?" Jeremy asked.
"I think I understand how you feel," I tried. "You're a writer. Writers respect the language. But you know, not everyone here writes as well as you. They need to feel free to write in the way they feel comfortable."
I decided to stick with only one teaching moment and not point out his own grammatical desecrations. He thought a minute. "Yeah, but they really piss me off." He did, however, seem just a little less pissed off than before.
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