NEW
Library Project
Volume 3, Number 1 - Fall 2004
From
Participant to Coordinator, Stories Save a Life
Interview with Chris Hill, by
Anndee Hochman
You can read Chris Hill’s story between the lines of his resume: High school student in gifted/talented classes, Army infantryman, University of New Orleans literature major. Or perhaps this story: Nightclub manager, bartender, insurance seller. Or this one: Drug and alcohol abuser, convicted felon, resident at Bo Robinson Education and Training Center, a prison-release program.
That’s where all the stories collided, where Chris Hill’s life took an irrevocable turn. One day, Hill saw a sign-up sheet for People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos. He asked another guy what the program was all about. “Short stories,” was the answer. Hill put his name on the list.
He’d always been a reader, ever since his grandfather taught him using an idiosyncratic approach—he had Hill memorize the names on hundreds of tiny Matchbox cars. He gobbled books—Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, an unflinching account of the Vietnam War.
He remembers his first People and Stories session, led by Patricia Andres. In the midst of contentious debate as participants took various positions on the story, “I was able to say what I thought, which hadn’t happened in so long.”
When the series ended, Andres asked if he would consider becoming a coordinator. Hill, now 35 and a medical clerk at the University of Pennsylvania, has led People and Stories groups at My Brother’s Keeper, a faith-based addiction-to-recovery program for men in Camden, and at Womanspace in Germantown, a behavior-modification program for substance abusers.
“At the beginning [of a People and Stories series], you’re kind of a referee,” he said. “By the end…people begin to talk more and more. They start defending themselves more articulately. And they start asking for more of the written word.
“Coming out of an addiction myself, [My Brother’s Keeper] was an interesting place to be. The guys were really eager; by the end, I couldn’t shut them up. The director said, ‘We have a lot of people come from the outside [to lead groups], but you’re the only one the guys mention in their prayers at night.’”
At Womanspace, he faced the added challenge of being the only man in the room. “You have to earn your way in,” he said.
Hill remembers reading “Thank You, M’am,” by Langston Hughes, at Womanspace. The group discussed the older female character, who, at the story’s start, is walking home late at night from her job at a beauty parlor. “All of a sudden one woman said, ‘There’s no beauty parlor open that late—she’s the madam of a whorehouse!’” That possibility altered Hill’s reading of the story forever, and reminded him of the value of life experience in understanding texts.
Hill remains a voracious reader, a self-described “political junkie” who devours topical books along with each year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. “I talk about People and Stories constantly,” he said. “Because I’m a convicted felon, I can’t teach anymore [in public schools or colleges]. The fact that I can participate in People and Stories is nothing short of miraculous. Maybe even life-saving.”