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Wow. What an incredible piece of writing this is from Mark Salzman (and others). He is able to bring you into the juvenile prison and make you forget that this is a work of non-fiction. There are times when you expect things to turn right for these teenage prisoners-we've been trained to expect our entertainment to have a happy ending-but they don't and you feel sorry that someone being convicted of murder (with a lot of evidence against them) is going to prison.
This sotry didn't catch me at first because of the prisoners. I was drawn to it because it had to do with someone teaching a writing class. I work at the Rhode Island Children's Crusade, which provides mentoring and after school programs to students in five high risk areas in Rhode Island, and I wanted to start up a creative writing afterschool program. This gave me a lot of ideas of how to get the kids to write (he couldn't figure out what to do when they got out of hand, so I'm on my own there). This book should be read by (besides everyone) english teachers who watn to incorporate creative writing in their classroom (or anyone considering doing an afterschool writing program). Salzman was able to get the kids to open up and really feel special. Its a great feeling when someone reads your writing and honestly tells you that they like your work-its enough to keep almost anyone going.
Salzman became a part of this when a friend at the LA Times took him to a session. A nun talked him into conducting his own class, which brought about a life changing experience for him and a great book for me to read. The program is called the Inside Out Writers program, which has professional writers volunteer their time to teach writing at detention halls and public schools in Southern California.
True Notebooks takes you into the well meaning head of Salzman as well as the thoughts and feelings of the prisoners, equipt with excerpts of their work. These kids are all relatively my age (no one older than 18 at the time), and they wrote some really intriguing pieces. This is what happens when you write from your heart instead of your head (though there's nothing wrong with either).
Salzman writes candidly and doesn't hold back. You can sense his frustration with the prisoners, but his pride, compassion and overall good that he was doing, as well as his enjoyment, makes the frustration seem futile. He was part of a project that meant something, even if only to an inside few (though some of the writings have now been published). "That, I wrote Kevin, was my answer to his question of why I went there: not because I always enjoyed it, and not because the boys always enjoyed it, but because most of us seemed to agree that it was a good thing to do."