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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, October 2, 2006

The nature of change

Women inmates' writing program photos

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Bathroom tissue is ready to catch the tears of WCCC inmate Tajsha Bidasha, who follows along while fellow inmates read their works from the creative writing book they wrote.

Photos by RICHARD AMBO | The Honolulu Advertiser

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COPIES OF "HULIHIA II" ARE NOT FOR SALE. HOWEVER, A LIMITED SUPPLY OF THE BOOKS CAN BE OBTAINED FOR A SUGGESTED $10 DONATION FROM:

Windward Arts Council

c/o Hulihia Writing Project

P.O. Box 1704

Kailua, HI 96734

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WCCC inmate Gina Ishida listens as her classmates read their passages from “Hulihia II: Writings From Prison.”

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Inmate Kaleio Pakele, 33, reads her poem to fellow classmates.

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Inmate Gina Ishida reflects as creative-writing classmates read their thoughts aloud during an emotional graduation day.

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WCCC inmate Earlily Aganon, right, thanks and hugs her creative writing teacher, Pat Clough.

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WCCC inmate Tajsha Bidasha puts her thoughts down in her notebook using one of many pens adorned with silk flowers for students in the WCCC creative writing class started by Clough.

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Clough

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Kaleio Pakele, 33 years old and doing a five-year sentence for assault, rises from a bench in a shoebox classroom and begins to read aloud, with a tear in her eye, from a new volume of writings from inside O'ahu's prison for women:

Starting the day at four in the morn/ Fake scrambled eggs, hot mush and tea/ Can you picture life in prison? Can you see? ... / I, myself, just hate it here/ I assume along with others/ I live to live with my son on the outs/ To share with him what life's all about.

Soon, Pakele's not the only one crying. A dozen other inmates at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, serving time for anything from drug abuse to murder, are tearing up, too. So are a half-dozen prison administrators sitting in the back of the classroom.

'Ilima Stern, a kuma hula and teacher in the prison's new writing program, walks around, holding out sheets from a roll of toilet paper to help everyone dry their eyes. Then Pakele continues:

I yearn for the day/ When I'm free to go/ Down the path of righteousness/ Free from this hate and bitterness./ So do your best/ To not choose wrong/ 'Cause prison is not/ Where you belong.

Everyone, inmates and officials alike, murmurs their approval and applauds, as much for sentiment as the poem itself.

This is graduation day for the writing class. There are no lei, no parties, no family members. But there is something almost as joyful: the chance for these locked-down women to have something most people on the outside don't get to see or hear: their own thoughts and words printed in a book, "Hulihia II: Writings From Prison."

"When it's in a book, you know it's real," Pakele says. "I'm looking forward to showing it to my son someday and reading it to him. Now, he'll be able to know who I really am."

IN THE BEGINNING

For the several dozen women in the writing classes, the experience has provided the first opportunity to really know themselves, says Pat Clough, a retired school teacher who started the program.

"They do a lot of self-examination. They know about prison drama, drug use, people left behind, bridges they've burned, but the writing helps them take their knowledge to another level. It's powerful evidence that they can make new connections," she says.

Clough started the prison class after seeing a group of red-shirted women armed with gardening tools trudging up a Lanikai hillside, not far from her Kailua home. Only later did she notice the Department of Public Safety guards keeping watch over them. From that fleeting vision, Clough got the idea to approach prison officials and suggest a creative writing class.

She soon found herself facing a group of life-hardened women who are gated, locked up and sometimes shackled.

"Are you afraid?" they asked.

"Should I be?" she countered.

No. They are not scary people, she found out. They are just women who haven't always had positive interactions with other adults and aren't sure how much they can trust outsiders.

"Once they trust you, their honesty is blinding," Clough says.

Now, three years into the program and with two volumes of prison writings published, trust is not a problem. The tears and hugs continue as the inmates revel in their growth.

Clough calls on them one by one to read their work aloud. Crina Holt, a heavyset, sweet-faced woman serving a five-year sentence for setting fire to her care home, is next:

I am a wild child/ screaming from inner soul, 'Let me be free!' / I burn deep inside like a/ fire-breathing dragon, not knowing how to cool down. .../ I cry and shout out loud, 'Why me?'/ Why do I deserve this kind of pain/ sorrow, and emotions that/ I can not hide from within me. .../ I am wild child screaming/ from the deepest part of my soul and spirit/ praying and asking/ "Why me Lord?/ Why me,"/ I ask for help to recover from my inner child."

"I never knew I had love and compassion in me before this class," Holt says later. "Instead of expressing my feelings, I'd inflict pain on myself. The writing took me to depths I didn't know I had."

That's the idea behind the program, says Maureen Tito, director of education programs for the womens prison. In addition to vocational, academic and physical skills, prison officials hope the education classes will instill a new spiritual and intellectual awareness in the women, she says. Writing offers them a chance to improve their cognitive skills, the ones that can help them recognize and change their behavior patterns.

The teaching is unlike anything she's done before, Clough says. The classes are always overseen by security guards and an education supervisor. Interruptions are frequent as guards summon the women to laundry, kitchen, parole board or clinic obligations.

"It's an environment that I have no control over," she says.

Yet, she can see real progress as the woman take off with concepts like simile and metaphor, and run with them, weaving images that became more intricate, colorful and precise.

"Once they get the hang of it, they can really take it to another level," Clough says. "Seeing it written down is powerful, tangible evidence of that. I love seeing them think for themselves, discovering the relationship between words and ideas, and, in the process, discovering that they have a good mind."

Mickie Kolo, who grew up in Papakolea, got addicted to drugs and is now serving a two-year term for promotion of dangerous drugs, agrees.

"Now I think If I can do this, I can do other things, too," she says, sitting at a school-room type desk wearing her drab gray prison outfit, with her last named tattooed on the side. "In prison you start to question your qualities and values. Do you still have them? The writing brings out things we didn't know we had anymore. It helps show that it's still OK to be a little girl sometimes."

DISCOVERING ONESELF

Next comes Earlily Aganon, a 38-year-old serving a life term after being convicted of the beating death of a 6-year-old girl. Slightly built with a buoyant attitude, Aganon says the writing class has helped transform her, much like the title of the book "Hulihia" and her poem in it suggests:

Change/ gives meaning to life / New life/ love, joy flow/ New life/ beauty, strength flow/ Cultivate yourself/ be braver/ stronger/ newer/ than you were yesterday/ Rise higher and higher/ reach the goal/ give life a second chance/ Breathe life/ rebuild / restore/ change/ give meaning to life."

Sabrina Fiaai, 43 and serving a 20-year term for killing her husband and stabbing another man, nods approvingly after hearing Aganon read.

"If we can help the rest of the world relate to us, that would be something. Hopefully they'll be enlightened to something. Lots of times I don't know what the heck I'm feeling, but writing helps me find out. I like the excitement of participating in something that's creative," she says.

As the last day of class and the graduation ceremony winds down, correctional officers knock on windows, summoning some of the prisoners away; others drift off on their own. A few stay on to read more of the literature they and their friends have produced from somewhere they didn't know they had before.

Clough is heading back to California for six months, turning the fall and winter classes over to Stern. Before she goes, she urges all the inmates to continue writing in their black marble composition notebooks, the only paper they are allowed in their quarters.

"Keep stretching yourself," she tells them.

She knows that most of the inmates will still be in the prison when she gets back, but a few will be gone, out on their own, with a chance to grow even more.

That's hulihia, the nature of change.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.