A Grip of Time
When Prison Is Your Life
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“The book provides insight into life inside a maximum-security prison while illuminating the benefits of the craft of writing. . . . compassionate.” —Publishers Weekly
A Grip of Time (prison slang for a very long sentence behind bars) takes readers into a world most know little about—a maximum-security prison—and into the minds and hearts of the men who live there. These men, who are serving out life sentences for aggravated murder, join a fledgling Lifers’ Writing Group started by award-winning author Lauren Kessler. Over the course of three years, meeting twice a month, the men reveal more and more about themselves, their pasts, and the alternating drama and tedium of their incarcerated lives. As they struggle with the weight of their guilt and wonder if they should hope for a future outside prison walls, Kessler struggles with the fiercely competing ideas of rehabilitation and punishment, forgiveness and blame that are at the heart of the American penal system. Gripping, intense, and heartfelt, A Grip of Time: When Prison Is Your Life shows what a lifetime with no hope of release looks like up-close.
“Takes us on a compelling, intensely personal journey into the rarely glimpsed end point of our justice system . . . What dignity, meaning, and success these lifers achieve despite the system’s design.” —Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Burned: A Story of Murder and the Crime That Wasn’t
“A keenly observed and deeply felt narrative . . . so original and so compelling . . . it wouldn’t let me go.” —Alex Kotlowitz, national bestselling author of An American Summer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kessler, a journalist and University of Oregon professor, chronicles her experience leading a writing group at Oregon State Penitentiary in this poignant work of narrative nonfiction. The book provides insight into life inside a maximum-security prison while illuminating the benefits of the craft of writing. Kessler's writing, as well as the writing of the men in her group, provides readers with rich descriptions of the lush entrance to the prison, the rigid system of rules that could be disrupted by random acts at any moment, and the inmates' sterile cells. She also describes in detail the hurdles she faced in starting the writing group and keeping it running, negotiating the bureaucracy around training, bringing books for the men, ensuring they can attend meetings, and so on. She also describes her pedagogical methods, including those she uses to help her writing group open up without feeling too vulnerable, starting each session with open-ended, single-word prompts like "dreams." Readers get to know the group members through their work and Kessler's discussions about them; one participant writes movingly about the idea of owning one's time, another about how hope is the thing that keeps a person at the end of their metaphorical rope from dropping it. This compassionate account reveals a bit of what life is like inside prison, and a bit about how writing can forge connections among vastly different people.
