Chapter One

      After two hours of trying on one dress after another- five, nondescript buttons threaten to ruin my resolve to document life behind bars. I am frustrated and anxious that the wrong garment choice could set back this project yet another week in what has become a year long nightmare of bureaucratic nitpicking and delays. I have grown weary of the process of trading one pair of dress pants for another identical pair that may or may not hug my hips a little too provocatively. The decision on what to wear is not usually so difficult for me– but today it is. I have decided against my oldie but goodie “interview” black dress. The dress would be considered by most to be conservative and appropriate for just about any occasion – weddings, funerals, bat mitzvahs, you name it – but today, because of the five buttons trailing from the neckline to waist on the dress, it is not the right dress to wear to prison. I have also decided against jeans and a printed t-shirt: the jeans are too tight and shirts with writing are not allowed. I don’t automatically know these rules – I am being educated by Joanna Marinova, Co-director of Press Pass Television who has arranged a meeting between me and a prison activist, Derrell Jones.

      “I know this sounds silly but I have to tell you,” Joanna informs me over the phone. “But be sure to wear a bra, they wont let you in without underwear.”

      Joanna and I have never met but we are connected by a cause: The desire – no, the need to “break the silence” in prisons. I initially began this journey alone – thinking I could enter the prisons as a writer teaching other women to document their narratives that would later be introduced into the media landscape via a web site. I was wrong and pitifully naïve. After a year long battle with the administration at MCI-Framingham, I had just about given up on seeing the project come to fruition. Now the project has been given new breath or it may be – at least this is what I gather from Joanna who tells me she knows of a person on the inside who is interested.

“It is a men’s prison,” she says knowing that my original intention was to work with women – but this was never written in stone and I am more than elated to have an opportunity to breathe new life in this project.

      We agree that I will meet Joanna’s colleague, Cara Lisa Berg-Powers in Norfolk, Massachusetts – the home of the MCI-Norfolk, an all men’s correctional facility. Cara meets me at the train station on a cold, blustery Thursday. I finally decided on khaki pants and a black turtleneck. I have been careful to pull my dreadlocks into a neat, non-threatening bun without using hairpins. I have been educated that hairpins are not allowed. Later I will learn neither are earrings, necklaces without religious symbols and any other jewelry except wedding rings. Cara is exuberant and motivated about our meeting with Jones. She tells me Jones works with men to prepare them for life on the outside. “He does the prison officials job of making these men better,” Cara tells me confidently. “If anyone can get these men to write, it is Derrell.”

      This is not my first time visiting my prison. In fact, I have visited various prisons as a reporter in North Carolina. I have been to death row in North Carolina’s Central Prison and I have even been allowed within the death chamber with a photographer. This would never happen in Massachusetts I am told by Cara, Massachusetts has banned the media from its prisons since the 1990’s.

      “How the hell are we supposed to know what happens in there?” I ask as we approach a large foreboding building with an iron gate. Cara looks at me with sky blue eyes and smiles slightly – to this question, the answers do not come easily.

      Once inside we join a line of women, some with children, who are eager to see their loved ones. They stand checking one another’s hair and outfits for appropriateness. The children are restless – everyone is anxious. These women discuss more than clothes – they speak to one another about isolation, justice and the conditions of prisons.

      One woman with mournful eyes wearing a St. Christopher’s medallion tells me and Cara, “I have been coming for three years. It is like I am locked up to.”

      After a brief wait in the front lobby of the prison, we are ushered into another room with a metal detector and then finally we can enter the visiting room. It looks like a 1980’s day room for a summer camp with the blue plastic chairs arranged in a semi-circle. It is impossible for privacy in this room. Children visit with their fathers and some become paradoxically bored and hyper at the same time, perhaps it is the combination of junk food they are fed from the vending machines and the lack of activities to engage them. The women seem tired – worn. The process of ‘visiting” is not for the weak or faint-hearted.

      What happens in the visiting room? What are the ties binding one person to another through years of separation? Are they reinforced or weakened by the stressors of prison? This is the purpose of this project. What are we missing when humanity is forcibly silenced? How do we as a society collectively respond? Is it our duty to listen? And finally, what is it these men and their families have to share?

    The Visiting Room is a forum for incarcerated men, their partners, children and their friends to share their perspectives on living and loving from behind bars. There are no restrictions on what can be shared – there are no censors, no guards hovering, and no time restrictions. This is real talk and real emotion – please come in write, read, learn. Welcome to The Visiting Room.