Gender in Changing Lives Through Literature
By Jean Trounstine (profile)

Women who arrive in the court system are in some ways different from their male counterparts. In my experience teaching women in prison for 10 years and running Changing Lives Through Literature programs for the same amount of time, I have found that success comes by understanding and accepting those differences. I have always run single-gender groups and found that women feel freer to express themselves, safer if you will (at least that is what they say), when they are with a majority of women. This safety does not mean that men cannot participate. Quite the contrary. It is fine to have a male probation officer (PO) or, in our case, a male judge and a male as one of the two POs. Men can add diverse perspectives, which is a fundamental tenet of CLTL. But it seems important to let the women dominate the conversation, to allow the CLTL session to be a place where they read about and tell their stories. Thus, I strongly believe in single-gender groups for women.

Gender plays a part in my book selections and how I direct discussion, but even more importantly, in the behavior of the women and their attitudes towards learning and change. Keeping the stakes high is important for these women because they have often been underestimated and infantilized. At the same time, it is essential to avoid minimizing their difficulties when they "can't understand" a text, have nothing to say, or even when they try to fake their way through a discussion.

Judge Joseph Dever, of the Lynn-Lowell program, says our participants are filled with self-loathing, and at the same time, with a sense that the world revolves around them. They often don't see the world through the eyes of others. I've thought a lot about the issues of women in our group, how remarkably able they are and what low self-esteem they have, and drawing on my experience from teaching women at MCI-Framingham Women's Prison, I concur with the judge, but I would also add that their insecurities and attitudes are culturally based. Helping them understand how to change their thinking often means coming to grips with what our society inculcates into and expects of women.

Much has been written about women's issues and about success or lack of success because of the forces on women in our society: the need to be nurturers; the fear of failure; the pressure to live the American dream and have 2.5 children, a husband, a happy home and a white picket fence; the responsibilities of family and homemaking that fall to females; the fact that women make less money in their careers than their male counterparts. Women of color face even more pressures than white women as they struggle with the higher incarceration rates of their family members and more issues of poverty and societal racism. CLTL can address some of these issues through the texts chosen and through the way discussions are run, but the agenda must never be to force opinions on the probationers. Instructors need to allow students to see where we are coming from and to acknowledge that we don't necessarily understand their life experiences. We need to encourage them to make choices that allow them to lead productive, healthy, and satisfying lives but always with an eye to what they want.

One way low self-esteem expresses itself is that women across the board, black, white, and Latina, will underestimate their reading abilities. In one class of mine, a new young white student got up and ran out of the room in tears after she was given the reading list for the semester. Her mother had always told her she couldn't read, and she carried that fear of failure with her. We brought her back into the group, and we helped her figure out exactly how many pages she had to read a night in order to complete the novel by the next class. The PO also helped her plan to check in a few times each week. Pretty soon, she was coming to class with notes on the texts. She stuck it out, struggling with book after book, getting family members to help her by reading aloud, and when she got to the point where she could read a whole book on her own, she couldn't have been prouder.

Interestingly, this woman brought her new baby and her ex-pimp to the graduation at the Lynn District Court; she said she had remained friends with her former pimp even after she got out of tricking. This made me think about the long dark road of male-female relationships that these women have tread. They talk often about their men through the characters, relating their attitudes towards being wives, girlfriends, ex-lovers, and friends. On the whole, few claim healthy relationships, and many who are in couples are afraid to leave bad relationships for all sorts of reasons: they believe their men will eventually change, they may depend on the money the man makes to support their family, or they may feel insecure about being on their own.

Lack of confidence shows up in early meetings, perhaps in part because our judge is a male and we have one male PO, but also because the students are not used to being asked for their opinions. Some probationers are at first afraid to talk in the discussion, certain that their ideas are "wrong" or that they "don't matter." This fear disappears as they grow to feel listened to by the group, by the men as well as by the women. They begin to feel some authenticity, their own power.

At first, power manifests itself differently in these women, many of whom have never learned to be assertive but rely on being passive-aggressive or outright aggressive. They blurt out things; they put themselves down; they say, "I agree with her," and stop talking. My role is to draw these women out, into their own true power, the kind that comes from contributing, from taking a stand, from engaging in an idea. My role also is to nudge the ones who always want center stage to give others a chance to express themselves, to always reinforce the idea that women have something important to say even if they disagree, and to encourage them to express their disagreements with others in strong but respectful ways. Speaking out is something we value highly in the women's program, and it needs to be modeled. Although we don't force people to have opinions, we try to accentuate the fact that allowing different opinions in the room is positive.

In Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees, the main character, Taylor, has a crush on Estevan, a married man. One scene involves a night they "almost" sleep together. At one of our sessions, Judge Dever said that he felt it was "noble" for Estevan not to succumb to his passions. One of the women, who had been shy early on and timid in our discussions, turned to him and told him politely but firmly that the only reason the man didn't give in is because Taylor was too tired and didn't let it happen. It didn't, she said, have anything to do with "nobility." They batted ideas back and forth for awhile, didn't agree, but accepted their differences. Most of the women looked at the judge kindly, but there was almost a universal sense in the room that they were the straight thinkers, not him, on this point. It was an empowering moment for them, the realization that they had more insight into women's lives and into their own lives than someone who was universally considered a symbol of authority. This kind of discussion cannot always be planned, but if we as instructors are aware of the dynamics in our room and make use of male voices as well as female ones, there is value for all of us around the table and, particularly, for the female probationers.

This learning to express oneself appropriately in the face of authority is important. These women come from histories of violence, where authority has meant domination. They have seen yelling, physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape, and, in some cases, murder. Many are victims of violence, but some are also perpetrators and have abused their children or partners. A few associate vigorous discussions with forcing others to see things your way, and these women are afraid that assertiveness means force. They too can see through modeling that ideas can be expressed with passion without taking something away from another. Some of the women who seem most resistant, those are used to battling it out on the streets, hustling, and conning, need most to learn to listen. Part of expressing oneself is learning to listen, and another part includes valuing others' opinions and not being afraid of difference.

Even the most vociferous probationer, the one we have to keep in check by reminding her to listen as well as to speak out, is at first afraid to take on the judge. As we go through the semester, she will begin to see that she is her own person and has a right to her views. This happens through the process of the discussion, and it happens because everyone, POs and judges alike, model listening deeply to ideas and feelings as well as talking. By the end of the seven classes, she will most likely have argued about what she thinks is morally right, criticized characters' actions, spoken out forcefully about which characters she respected and which she did not, and come up with her own conclusions about what makes people behave in certain ways. She will also have begun to learn to listen intently to what others have to say.

Most women are used to being quiet, and many are used to hiding, but few of us are adept at listening. Listening is part of what helps the women deepen their understanding of themselves. CLTL allows us to have a greater sense of how others view the world, but we often have to learn to hear these views as distinct from our own. Sometimes I repeat what a student says to validate her idea or so she sees how to be sure to catch exactly what another means. Asking someone to put an idea from another into her own words encourages this careful attention.

Inevitably, there is one person in a CLTL group whose insecurities are expressed through a "good girl" approach. That probationer will often sit next to me, will try to get answers "right," and will be less able than others to think deeply about ideas. She may appear to be a good listener, but sometimes she isn't really processing material. She's too afraid that she will be wrong. Many of the probationers are much more willing to talk than to listen. One time, when we were discussing Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, two women stood up at opposite ends of the table as the discussion got heated, gesturing into the air as they argued with each other. It was less violent than it sounds, but they were both caught up in their own opinions and were really loud, almost shouting. We had to sit them down and get them to listen to each other. Most women stop interrupting when reminded a few times, but I've been known to ask someone to "hold that thought."

The women are often touched by the books we read and want to relate them to their lives. In fact, one of the great things about the women's program is that most women intuitively make these connections and have many insights into characters. They easily relate to characters or say how a character is like their mother or sister, and once a discussion gets going and they feel listened to and valued, most have no trouble building upon these connections week to week. They remember a story we read two weeks ago or think how a character this week seems similar to a woman they met in a book three weeks ago. There is always a fine line between sticking to the text and bringing up some memory in one's own life (see the section labeled "Discussion" in the Lynn-Lowell paradigm), but it is safe to say that the women enjoy making connections to themselves, and as the course progresses, listening to the connections that others make.

Some women can't help going off on a tangent and getting into personal material. They are used to therapy or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or other places where self-confession is valued. Although I value making deep connections, I strongly believe in making the classroom a safe place where people do not feel that their personal lives need to be revealed in order to have insight (see the section labeled "Conversation" in the Lynn-Lowell paradigm). When someone says, "This family is just like mine," and proceeds to go into her family's history, I always gently direct conversation back to the text or to a more universal conclusion about such families.

Occasionally, one of our POs has been approached by a student's therapist and told that she or he did not recommend that the student read a particular book. This usually occurs because someone is afraid of the material they perceive the text is about. This occurred with The Bluest Eye, which deals with a character who is sexually abused. "It's bringing up too much," was the generalized comment, and the PO told me she had gone along with the therapist. The student was not going to read that text.

I disagreed with the therapist and the PO but did not protest. Although I agree that our readings can provoke deep memories, it seems to me that there is also a healing that comes through discussion of the behavior of characters (who are not oneself) in a group setting. To look at Cholly as a rapist in The Bluest Eye, does not mean we do not hurt again with the memory of our own experience, but to look at him in a group perhaps diminishes his power over us. Precisely because we don't focus on a person's particular life in our group, the probationer can begin to see that she is not alone. This is my story, someone says but also realizes that these things happen to other people. The community helps us handle our pain. It becomes more bearable.

Also, there is a detachment that can come from looking at a painful subject through a character who is not one's self. This detachment allows us to see behavior through the eyes of a character and makes whatever is overwhelming, less so. If the women in my class had not read The Bluest Eye because it "brought up too much," there may not have been the profound realizations that occurred in our classroom about the nature of love, relationships, racism, childhood wisdom, and human behavior.

I am not suggesting that a teacher put her- or himself in opposition to the PO, who can be in a tricky position as well, supporting the probationer's program. However, it's not a black and white issue, and perhaps it's good to have a place where things that lurk in the corners of our minds and hearts are brought out of the shadows. Our groups allow us to see that we don't have to stay alone in darkness. And for women, this seems particularly important, in that while we know others share our feelings and others have our experiences, we are used to managing kids, household, and jobs, as well as our lives, and often feel we have to bear things alone.

As the women start to feel successful in CLTL, they have to deal with people who don't want them to succeed. Sometimes this is the controlling boyfriend. I remember how one woman from Lynn asked that, at the end of class, the van driver drop her off a street or two away from the Lynn Court. She didn't want her boyfriend to see her coming from the program in a van driven by a man because she knew her boyfriend would be jealous. Unlike stories I've heard from some of the men's programs, in which their girlfriends come and sit outside the door waiting for them and, in some cases, read the books with them, partners of our women are often disparaging of the women's successes. Early on, one student wrote me a letter about how difficult it was for her to be in the program because of her abusive boyfriend. I remember seeing his car when he drove up to the college to pick her up after class, a rat-trap with no back seat and music blaring in the parking lot. When she got into the car, I could hear him raise his voice about making him wait, and I could see her sitting sullen, staring straight ahead, hardly the lively woman who had blossomed in our discussions.

Not only do many female CLTL students not get support from their boyfriends, some are single mothers who have to fit reading time in between taking care of kids and looking for work. Many have minimum-wage jobs. Others can't find work. Some are on welfare. Most have not had the luxury of thinking about what they want to do with their lives. "What do you want to do with your one wild and precious life?" says Mary Oliver in her poem Summer, and to many of the women, when I read this poem aloud, the question is new. When we meet with the women after graduation, we talk about continuing with their education; we talk about lifelong learning. Learning that they have choices is a first for them, since they tend to see themselves moving through life on a conveyor belt.

Victimization is a reality, as well as a learned response, for many of these women. They have to learn to take responsibility for their choices, which is different from taking responsibility for their families. After seeing the way characters handle choices, they are able to compare characters' actions to their own behavior. I often ask the women to write about a character they have admired during our session and get interesting responses based on their own needs. Sometimes, they will identify with someone who is totally different from who they are but someone who will, in a sense, teach them new ways of being in the world. This happened with Suzanne, who was a drug-addicted student clinging to a man she could not find the courage to leave; she was someone who wanted to go back to school but couldn't get herself to take action. Here's what she said about Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees:

"Annawake Fourkiller is the character I admired most because she took a job to help and be part of her history. She was a lawyer for Indian rights. Annawake wanted Turtle [her daughter] to have the benefit of her ancestry, but she also had some personal history of her own to deal with. What impressed me the most was how Annawake softened and became compassionate about people and not just passionate about the cause. She became human."

For Suzanne, as for many women, encountering someone who is as different from themselves as Annawake Fourkiller means that they may begin the long process of reconsidering their choices in life.

Women often say that among the things CLTL gives them is an opportunity to feel good about themselves. I think focusing on readings by women, keeping the discussion on issues important to women, and allowing the participants to drive the group are all ways they achieve self-esteem. I think keeping the group safe allows them to be themselves so they can grow to share more of their ideas and insights as they progress through the program. As Karla said about herself while examining Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God:

"Like Janie, I don't want to be anyone's slave or servant, nor do I want to be someone who's just around for convenience. I want to be treated as an equal. I've had too many experiences already where guys want you for your money, car, or sex and only treat you nicely when you're providing them with those things. As Janie said, there are two things everyone has to do for themselves, and that's go to God and find out about living on their own."

Through great literature and great characters, CLTL helps women find out about living on their own. In discussion, where the women's ideas and insights get to be the center, they soar, and CLTL becomes a step towards a true change in attitude and a new way of looking at their world.