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“The women of Framingham (Prison) sought a way out and their struggles gave them dignity. I could hear their voices speaking out of the darkness.”

 - Jean Trounstine, author, activist, professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts, and today’s guest on Fierce Conversations with Toby

Some of our fierce topics today:

[02:57 ] I began working with people in prison and, it changed me, it turned me into a prison activist, and it turned me into a writer.

[04:50 ] If my students tackled Shakespeare, a writer they thought beyond reach, they would also be learning to take on what was most difficult in life.

[30:33 ] My new book is called Mother Love and it's a book of short stories about ten different women whose child killed someone.

[38:35 ] Poetry comes to you when you need to say something that comes so deep from the heart that you can't say it unless you do it in a poem. 

More about Jean Trounstine and her work:

Jean Trounstine

I prefer to talk about how I became an activist, working in a prison, writing books to change things. 

I have written 6 and write currently as well for the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

Shakespeare Behind Bars

I believed that if my students tackled Shakespeare, a writer they thought beyond reach, they would also be learning to take on what was most difficult in life.

The women yearned for change and growth.

Eventually the program took on a philosophy: art has the power to redeem lives.

I came to realize that most women in prison are not dangerous. What characterizes them more than anything else is their heartache. Instead of frightening me they seemed lost, with tragic lives.

I knew nothing of the fellowship that exists in prison. Women inmates seek relationships, thrive on it.

It is this prison community that sustains women who do time. It is this community that taught me to value the prisoner’s lives, to like and respect them, and to understand that they are more than news stories tucked away on a back page in our local papers.

While it is true that prison is a repressive environment, the one who offers hope in the classroom has the potential to effect change.

The women of Framingham sought a way out, and their struggles gave them dignity.

I could hear their voices… speaking out of the darkness.

Boy With a Knife

The United States was a county that set controversial boundaries where childhood ended and adulthood began in terms of criminal responsibility. Until 2005, the US was the only nation that still sanctioned the death penalty for youth.

These boys and girls, barely having earned their driver’s license, too young to vote, too young to legally buy alcohol or cigarettes, are locked away with adult men and women. This in spite of the fact that 90 percent of juveniles, even those convicted of murder, grow out of criminal behavior as they age.

Putting young people in state prisons essentially silences them.

Sending juveniles to adult prisons doesn’t make us safer.

The international standard for incarceration of juveniles for the most serious crimes is ten or fifteen years prior to parole eligibility.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Jean Trounstine:

https://www.concordfreepress.com/request-a-book-motherlove

https://www.jeantrounstine.com/

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Toby Dorr:

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