NEW
Library Project
Volume 3, Number 2 - Spring 2005
Helping
Inmates Revision the World through Words
Interview with Lynne Fagles, by Anndee
Hochman
When
all else failed, Lynne Fagles resorted to clipping coupons.
As a volunteer teaching reading one-on-one to inmates at the Mercer County Corrections Center, Fagles was working with a man who was struggling to learn the alphabet. The techniques she had learned in training sessions for literacy volunteers—to elicit personal narratives from learners, record them and then use those stories as texts—just weren’t working with an inmate who couldn’t recognize the letters of his own name.
Finally, Fagles brought in grocery-store coupons with pictures of items she hoped the man would recognize and connect to the mysterious symbols that spelled words. “Finally this student was able to come to me and say, ‘I read a word on television.’ Something was getting through.
It was her own love of literature, combined with
her background as a teacher, that guided Fagles toward literacy work with
prison inmates. She worked with men at Bo Robinson Education and Training
Center, a prison-release program. She joined the board of People and
Stories–Gente y Cuentos in 2003.
“I believe that we really can help people see themselves in this
world in a very loving and constructive way through literature. People and
Stories has given me another venue for the kind of thing I really like to
do.”
Fagles, who taught at private schools in New Haven and Princeton
and is married to a professor emeritus of literature at Princeton
University, said her work with inmates challenges her to find connections
with men of varying backgrounds, interests and skill levels.
“It puts me on my mettle. I find it very interesting because it
is so individualized.” Her materials range from workbooks aimed at
elementary readers to GED practice tests to job applications forms. One
man requested stories about John Brown, the abolitionist leader.
“[At Bo Robinson], the men can read, but with difficulty. Many
have finished high school but really don’t read beyond a 3rd-
or 4th-grade level. A lot of it has to do with lack of
confidence. That’s basically what I am providing—a sense that they can
ask a question, that they don’t have to be embarrassed. We build a
really trusting relationship.”
The weekly sessions, which last at least one hour, are tiring for
both Fagles and her learners. She tries to reassure the men by emphasizing
that, while reading depends on myriad rules, those rules are often broken.
“Success happens when they make connections from their lives,” she
said. “[They realize] that a word means something, and we can go from
there to an experience. You can tell in the look on a face; you can tell
with a question. I think they mostly get a sense that [reading] is
possible for them and worthwhile.”
Fagles grew up immersed in stories of Caddie Woodlawn and Heidi;
as a teenager she gobbled left-wing political tracts. Today, her reading
tastes gravitate to the contemporary authors she knows personally: C.K.
Williams, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison. “I’m hoping that
eventually the people I work with will be able to read well enough to get
the pleasure of reading good things.”