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The Art of Not Bowing: Writing by Women in Prison

Carol Muske

Who the hell am [ anyway
Not to bow?

(Assata Shakur/Joanne Chesimard)

In July 1973 | wrote an article for The Village
Voice about a hunger strike then taking place at
the Women’s House of Detention (New York
City Correctional Institution for Women, hous-
ing around 400 detention and sentenced wom-
en) on Riker’s Island. | used a pseudonym for
the article because | was working at the time at
the prison as a mental health worker as well as
teaching a poetry class, and | wanted to keep
both occupations. Many of the women in my
class were involved in the strike and were em-
phatic about the significance of their stand,
although traditionally women at Riker’s were
notoriously apolitical, even downright reaction-
ary. Strikes had taken place before, but on is-
sues such as cosmetics (the women had wanted
an Avon lady), more dances and recreation time
or flashier products in commissary.

This strike was different. The women were
demanding, among other things, a legal library,
an end to massive and lax prescription of “diag-
nostic” medication, decent food, and limitation
of solitary confinement to three days. At the
Women’s House, where an old adage ran “all
riots end at mealtime,” this was pretty heady
stuff.

The article in The Village Voice (July 26, 1973)
was supposed to get the world (or at least Man-
hattan) listening and to familiarize people with
awoman’s situation in prison:

.. .incarceration for women is a somewhat
different experience than it is for men. Male
prisoners are expected to be political in one
form or another, they are far better legally
informed, and an atmosphere of “bonding” is
prevalent. (They are also considered more
“trainable” —more vocational rehab programs
exist for men on Riker’s Island.)

The administration broke the back of the
strike in its sixth day by separating the ringlead-
ers, transferring them to different housing
areas, or locking them in the “bing” (solitary).
But it was too late. The article appeared and
provoked a reaction from the community: pres-
sure was put on the warden. A few of the wom-
en’s demands were met: a legal library was es-
tablished, kitchen conditions were improved,
and other steps were taken. Someone from the
class hand-printed a sign and put it up in
the classroom: WORDS CAN TURN THEM
AROUND.

This was a milestone. | had been teaching
the class for about a year and felt that although
the women’s response had been overwhelming-
ly enthusiastic, | was getting nowhere in the
actual teaching of writing. It wasn’t that the
women were intimidated by the act of writing.
Far from it. They wrote to keep mentally alive,
to keep sane. When | first suggested the idea of
a writing workshop to the warden, she scoffed
at it. “These women don’t write,” she said.
“They don’t read. The overall educational level
is poor. Reading, writing, comprehension. . .all
very low.” At the first class, | learned that all the
women “wrote” —they came to class lugging
diaries, journals, manuscripts full of long
poems, ballads, stories. Everyone had a poem
to “tell”; poetry was a tradition; poems were
written, read, copied by hand, and passed
around —a publishing network. No one owned a
poem. All the poems rhymed, and all were
either sentimental love/religious verse or politi-
cal rhetoric. My failure had been the inability to
let them see alternatives: a poem was not
always an escape, a fantasy, or a slogan, but a
way into yourself, an illumination. Somehow
the article, which was about them, about their
very real lives in clear, simple language, did it.
Someone said that a poem could be like report-
ing on your life, telling the story of your life—
journalism of the soul.

They tried out this approach. Millie Moss,
who sat all day in front of the television watch-
ing commercials about getting away from it all
and listening to the planes (one every three
minutes) take off from La Guardia a few hun-
dred yards across the water from the prison,
wrote the first. (Millie had been a “hearts and
flowers” verse writer: her poems were filled with
“giggly sunsets”):

Fly Me, I'm Mildred

Finger my earring as | lean low
over your bomber cocktail
I've been known
to put you on a throne
send you off alone (not united)
through the tomb-boom roar
you get what you're asking for
when you fly me, honey,
I’'m Mildred.