"Shakespeare Saved My Life."The title of Dr. Laura Bate's book is a quote by a prisoner in super maximum security. Dr. Bates volunteered to teach Shakespeare to prisoners.
The students were taken to private cells with small openings. They knelt on the cement floor and spoke through the opening to join the discussion. One student, Larry Newton, was convicted for life without parole for his participation in a murder, Newton had survived years in isolation.
Although Newton's education was sketchy and incomplete, he excelled at connecting the plays to his experiences. The plays made him confront his own actions and gave him a feeling of power over his thoughts and actions. He found self esteem and a reason to live.
"Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking."
"Everyone puts themselves into so many prisons."
--Larry NewtonNewton became a teacher himself, writing curriculum and plays for at-risk teens and prisoners.
"The idea is not to give the the answers, but to make them question."--Larry NewtonThe prisoners were eager to participate in the program. They told Bates that by delving into the plays they were confronted their own decisions and thoughts. One prisoner admitted that the plays had saved lives--two.
A prisoner in the Shakespeare program was also a quilter and made Bates a quilt: 228 squares of black, white, and denim cloth. The black and white photograph in the book shows medallion style quilt with four printed bandannas in the center. It was surrounded by borders of squares in a checked pattern, and set with four more bandannas in the outside corners of the quilt. It is 6 feet by six feet according to Bates.
The prisoners who participated in both the Shakespeare program and the quilting group recited Shakespearean text while sewing, entertaining the other quilters and memorizing lines. The quilts were donated to charitable causes, including battered women's shelters and the families of deceased veterans. The quilts had been in the Indiana state fair and in the news.
The book is the choice of OverDrive's first Big Library Read, a global ebook club. The e-book can be downloaded for free between March 17 through March 31. Read about it at http://biglibraryread.com/
See Dr Bates on this news story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3JNobjeLjU
National Geographic's Innovators includes Dr. Bates in this story with photos
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/innovators/2014/04/140428-innovator-laura-bates-prisons-solitary-confinement-shakespeare/
"He said he'd been through all sorts of programs in prison, and nothing worked. But Shakespeare did. Why? Because all those other programs start with the premise that you're broken and need to be fixed—need to become another person. Shakespeare starts with the premise that you're not broken if you can handle the language and grapple with the issues. Once you do, you can start to get past whatever personas you've been hiding behind and examine who you really are."
- What 'prisons' of habitual patterns are we caught in?
- How would we react to the situations described in the book?
- What Shakespeare plays you have read and can you discover personal relevance in the four-hundred-year-old text?
- What are your personal prisons--and how can you overcome them?
To read an excerpt of the book check out
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/shakespeare-saved-my-life-excerpt-_n_3133831.html?
The book is compelling to read and often it is moving and hard to read. Dr. Bates does not put forward judgment on the prison system or about the rehabilitation of Larry Newton. Reading about Newton's background and experience growing up I did feel upset that he had been failed by society, and felt that his treatment in juvenile corrections was harsh and unhelpful.
Dr. Bate's work engages the prisoners who truly struggle with the text and how it applies to their own lives. It appears that because of their experiences the prisoners gain deeper insight into the plays than most college students coming from a more protected and supportive background.
I enjoyed my classwork in Shakespeare and have enjoyed seeing his plays in adulthood. My high school teacher made King Lear understandable to me, and I also covered that play in two different college courses. I learned that one should not give away power thinking that those who gain it will keep your best interests at heart. In other courses we read Hamlet, Henry V Part I and II, A Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as having read Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Cesar in high school classes. How has Shakespeare been relevant to my life? I haven't been as impacted as Larry Newton has been. I feel poorer in comparison.
I cannot imagine entering a prison as a volunteer. As a quilter, reading about a quilting group in prison sends chills up my spine. We work with scissors and needles and pins! Small objects that could be used as weapons, easily hid away. Dr. Bates grew up in a tough neighborhood, a child of immigrants, and was was not afraid of the men. She was careful and thoughtful, dressing drably and keeping relationships on a professional level.
As a book for discussion Shakespeare Saved My Life would excel. The comments left on the OverDrive website are varied and diverse.
I would not have discovered this book without the OverDrive promotion. I am glad I read it and I look forward to the next Big Library Read.
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