The Maximum Security Book Club
Reading Literature in a Men's Prison
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"A riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men's prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them--Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran. On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club with a group of convicts from the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. She assigns them ten dark, challenging classics--including Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe's story "The Black Cat," and Nabokov's Lolita--books that don't flinch from evoking the isolation of the human struggle, the pain of conflict, and the cost of transgression. Although Brottman is already familiar with these works, the convicts open them up in completely new ways. Their discussions may "only" be about literature, but for the prisoners, everything is at stake. Gradually, the inmates open up about their lives and families, their disastrous choices, their guilt and loss. Brottman also discovers that life in prison, while monotonous, is never without incident. The book club members struggle with their assigned reading through solitary confinement; on lockdown; in between factory shifts; in the hospital; and in the middle of the chaos of blasting televisions, incessant chatter, and the constant banging of metal doors. Though The Maximum Security Book Club never loses sight of the moral issues raised in the selected reading, it refuses to back away from the unexpected insights offered by the company of these complex, difficult men. It is a compelling, thoughtful analysis of literature--and prison life--like nothing you've ever read before"--
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Mikita Brottman begins a book club at a maximum security prison. Brottman has experience teaching in college. She begins with the book I hated more than any other school-assigned book I read, Heart of Darkness, and the inmates reaction to the book is similar to mine. She moves next to Bartleby the Scrivener by Moby-Dick author Herman Melville, and the inmates don't connect to it either. But she scores a big hit with the next two of the next three books she tries, Ham on Rye and On the Yard. Macbeth is, somewhat surprisingly, enjoyed as is a Poe short story, but there are mixed feelings about Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and The Metamorphosis. Two books she expected the inmates to connect with, Junkie and Lolita, had the opposite response from the inmates; the inmates hated both Junkie and Lolita because they saw the characters as repulsive.
One of the parts of the book that most surprised me was a session where the inmates talked about the violence of a father to his child in a book. Brottman felt that was exaggerated, but the inmates shared many similar experiences with Brottman. I was surprised that Brottman didn't realize that home violence is common to prisoners.
Brottman felt like she connected with the inmates during the time she held the club, but she was sad to learn that they seemed to change dramatically when they were released from prison and she did not like who they became.
The idea behind the book club and hearing stories about each of the men who participated are what qualify this book to receive two stars, in my opinion.
However, the author, despite having a PH.D. and years of teaching experience, is the absolute wrong person to be running a book club for prisoners.
A good leader Mikita Brottman is not, not just for being completely unaware (and unwilling to learn) about the conditions in which her book club members live, waiting nearly 3 years to tour the prison.
Her selections are outrageously insensitive; every selection is about being imprisoned literally or figuratively from “On the Yard” to “The Metamorphosis” to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Sure, have a selection or two with that theme, but one after the other? A good leader would switch up the themes or types of selections.
A good leader would understand that each member relates to the material differently and certainly from personal frames of reference. Some of the book club members weren't voracious readers, but bravely took up each challenge.
A good leader wouldn't expect other book club members to struggle with material that the leader disliked at first and/or also struggles with. Hitting the group with “Heart of Darkness” right out of the gate is crazy; despite being short, it's densely packed and rather difficult.
A good leader from outside the prison would understand that there are boundaries that must be set and maintained, particularly as a psychoanalyst. Ms. Brottman spends some time talking about how she objectifies the men's bodies and projects certain expectations on them, then expects the men to conform to her wishes. How about maintaining boundaries after the prisoners have completed their sentences?!?
A good leader would not act put upon because she cannot bring her dog to prison.
A good leader would not expect a book club to change members' lives when part of the appeal is that the club is lead by a woman and another part is trying something different. The author ends the book feeling sorry for herself and whining that all she has is literature.
