Name: Beyond The Prison Walls Bundle
Brand: Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore
Price: 27.96 USD
Availability: InStock

Beyond the Prison Walls Bundle

Limited Edition, Two Book Bundle

Make a Poem Cry: Creative Writing from California's Lancaster Prison (Paperback)

and

From Darkness to Hope: Prison Writing about Redemption (Paperback)

"Make a Poem Cry: Creative Writing from California's Lancaster Prison" (Paperback)

Make a Poem Cry is an anthology of poems from one of California’s high-security prisons brought to us through the creative writing classes of Luis J. Rodríguez, sponsored by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. Rodríguez, who is Tia Chucha Press’s founding editor, and formerly incarcerated writer Kenneth E. Hartman have selected work penned from 2016 to 2018. These are poems, essays, stories, and more mined from the depths of familial, racial, and economic violence. They are imaginings for how to address trouble and crime without punishment, dehumanization, and violence in return. Here’s restorative/transformative justice in action. Here’s redemption in the flesh. Here are voices and viewpoints needed for a just and equitable world for all.

Funded by the Arts for Justice Fund, the project is part of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural’s “Trauma to Transformation Program.”

"From Darkness to Hope: Prison Writing about Redemption" (Paperback)

The writings in this anthology are from incarcerated men in the high security B Yard of California State Prison-Los Angeles County in Lancaster, CA. As editor Tuan Doan writes in his preface, These men had great potential but no one was there to show them how to express themselves, and no available platforms to allow young minds the seeds of greatness to flourish. There was nothing to look forward to, but pain and destruction. They developed a survival mentality that benefited no one. In these often harrowing accounts, there are also the liberating messages of responsibility, redemption and rehabilitation. These stories and poems prove that anyone with the proper knowledge, tools, resources, communities, spiritual engagement, and imaginations can change. With an introduction by Luis J. Rodriguez, an acclaimed author and activist, who has taught creative writing, read poetry, held talks, and facilitated healing circles in prisons, jails, and juvenile lockups for 38 years.