Bert Stern has taught in the Dorchester CLTL Program for nine years. He is a writer, editor, and poet, a retired English professor and retired chief editor of Hilton Publishing. He and his wife, Tam Neville, co-edit Off the Grid Press, which publishes poetry books by writers over 60.

This is the first in a three part series by Bert Stern.  Check back next week for part two.

In two days and two nights on the street I didn’t learn what it was like to be homeless. I did learn to sit among men ripe with loss, some of them stripped down to their last scraps of spirit. A stated aim by the Zen Peacemakers, under whose auspices I made my visit, was to taste the “generosity of the streets.” And we did taste it, not only in soup kitchens, where, in one case, servers actually brought our food to the table in separate trays, but in occasional handouts of food and, more rarely, spare change that we panhandled for morning coffee.

In Changing Lives Through Literature, I’d seen people awaken from despair. I cherish the experience of sharing people’s journeys to their better selves, a journey I too have taken through all its phases. I suppose I expected similar experiences on the retreat.

But my actual experience was that I walked among shadows – shadows of people walking through the space where I slept, shadows of burdened day-lit lives that I could observe but did not enter, my own shadow cast on the top of a stairway outside Trinity Church where I spread out my cardboard bed in preparation for a sleep that did not come easy or remain so.

The core of Buddhism is kindness and generosity to others. This does not mean charity or even generosity in the ordinary sense. It means helping others become fearless by undoing the traps ego has set for them, thus opening them to the dharma, the truth of the teachings. The movement is toward “emptiness,” an unfortunate translation for the Sanskrit “Shunyata,” which, simply put, means an openness of reality unfiltered by our senses, thoughts (even thoughts so basic as form), or feelings, an openness so complete that subjectivity is dissolved. Maybe if I’d remained on retreat for weeks instead of days I might have found way to be an agent of such charity. As it was, I did not.

The kindness I did experience was in the excellent company of my companions – two men in their twenties, two in their early sixties (I myself am going on eighty), company that included much laughter and wisdom. Twice each day we’d meditate in a circle together, often in a park, and then hold a council, initiated by the lighting of a candle and incense, then one or the other of us dedicated the council to, for example, “family,” by one of the young men who at lunch that day experienced among the men around him the raw absence of the family love he himself enjoyed. We’d then go on to share our individual experiences.

I entered this experience without much anxiety. Despite my age, I’m fit, and also stable enough that anxiety rarely rides me anymore. Hunger was never a problem. I learned that in America hunger need never be a problem, at least for those sufficiently able-bodied and clear-minded to get to a soup kitchen. Outside one kitchen we saw a dumpster topped by a solid layer of wrapped sandwiches that the kitchen had been unable to give away. In general, the portions served to us were a kind of parody of American eating habits – three large scoops of rice covered with sloppy joe mix, or, to my surprise, a serving of lobster salad that must have weighed half a pound. A lot of this food was scraped into a garbage can at the end of the meal, although I did see men eat as if there were no tomorrow.

There were plenty of reasons to be unsure about one’s next meal: arriving too late to be fed, getting caught in bad weather, or enduring any number of the other mishaps or harms the street has to offer. Still, the food was there. Outside the soup kitchens, food is hard to get. We talked about panhandling for meals but discovered that, between us, we could never put together more than enough for morning coffee.

I didn’t mind the indifferent and sometimes hostile looks I got from people I tried to beg from. I didn’t need them to see me in order to confirm that I exist. Yet the denial of one’s humanity those looks were meant to convey can cut. Ten years ago Ellen Burstyn, the actress, went on a street retreat in New York. Her knees were bad and walking was painful, yet at one point she had to get from the lower west side to uptown, so she set out panhandling change to buy a subway token. A woman finally gave her the dollar that put her over the top. Then, as Burstyn crossed the street heading for the subway entrance, she burst into tears, because the woman who gave the dollar never looked at her.

Lori Bradley is a graduate student working on her the Master’s Degree in Professional Writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  She holds graduate degrees in art and art education and teaches in the Art Education Department at UMD.  She maintains a studio in New Bedford (http://www.hatchstreetstudios.com) where she creates art that embodies a sense of place.  She loves dogs.

Michael Mountain, founder of the renowned Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah, understands the value of a positive story.  The success of his organization is, in part, due to the positive stories he publishes about rescued animals.  Mountain swears he will never get bogged down in the draining negativity and jaded cynicism often overwhelming to animal rescue volunteers.  People don’t want to hear the horror stories – the dead end tale.  People want and need redemption stories.

A great story about redemption and rescue is Prison Dogs, a program at Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, KS in which prisoners train and rehabilitate abused “death row” dogs with behavior problems and adopt them out as pets and service dogs.  Participating in the animal rescue and redemption process can improve the lives of prisoners – relieving guilt and depression, leading to a sense of atonement and hope.

Each rescued animal becomes a hero – embarking on a journey of redemption. Prisoners can connect and identify with the animal as protagonist taking a journey of learning and readjustment.

Reading literature and identifying intensely with a character undertaking a heroic journey can have a similar impact on lives. A great heroic journey story is a gift from writer to reader.  Different stories are more compelling at different stages in life – but the archetypal trip is the same – the resistance to change, the eventual push, finding a mentor or guide through difficult times, the fall into the depths of oblivion and a sudden awareness that signals the way up and out, and finally, the return to a new normal – with new, special knowledge leading to a better life.

The archetypal hero’s journey reflects ways in which people wind up in trouble and in prison: A circumstance forces a change in the hero’s life, the change may lead to situations that quickly spiral out of control.  The hero is often enticed by a partner (co-perpetrator) to commit an act that results in a forced crossing of a threshold into a challenging world of trials, enemies. The hero must struggle with great trials in the bad place – the dragons in the cave – before finding the way home as a wiser person.

The hero story is effective because the protagonist faces trial as a victim of circumstances – not as innately evil – a healthier way of considering prisoners, and all people (and dogs) for that matter.

Certainly, a new outlook on redemption and rehabilitation is needed in prison systems. In the article  Sky in a Box: Reflections on Prisons, Preachers, Storytelling and Salvation, creative writing instructor Nancy L. Cook laments that prisons give lip service to ideas of reform, redemption and rehabilitation, while in reality offer a toxic form of social control involving totalitarian rules, isolation, separation from loved ones, and relentless condemnation.  In such a bleak environment, literature and hero stories offer hope and the promise of change.

Here are a few of my favorite hero stories that were significant to me at different points in my life:

•            The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand– a hero struggles with artistic identity and resists the mob             mentality of the popular voice.  With the help of a friend, he overcomes threats and criticism to create authentically.

•            Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – an innocent is forced by circumstances into a prison-like orphanage and struggles with constant dark threats and a cruel bullying warden, with the help of a friend (who dies.)  The hero fights and surmounts her obstacles and becomes a teacher at the same school, improving the overall atmosphere with knowledge gained though her struggle.

• Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen – a Boston student struggling with an elusive form of mental             illness does a stint in Maclean Hospital, befriends inmates with serious disorders and identifies with them to the point of becoming wholly absorbed in their world. The death of a friend and other dark incidents motivate her to find her way out of the institution to a healthier life.

Nicole Beaudoin is a master’s candidate in the Professional Writing Program at UMass Dartmouth. Currently, she works with the University’s web team and teaches Business Communications as a TA. She has a passion for literature, writing and especially dogs.

Adolescence is a time in life for making mistakes and learning lessons to carry into adulthood. But for the thousands of juvenile offenders in our country’s prison system, adolescence is just part of their life sentence without parole. For many of these youths, one wrong decision has led them to live their entire lives behind bars for committing what officials call “adult crimes,” when in fact they do not even understand these crimes.

In the New York Times discussion forum “room for debate,” Mark Mauer, Executive Director of the Sentencing Project and the author of Race to Incarcerate, argues that sentencing children is inherently different than sentencing adults:

…children are different than adults. As the Supreme Court noted in its 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons banning the death penalty for juveniles, children do not have fully matured levels of judgment or impulse control, and are more susceptible to peer pressure than adults.

Mauer says that children are “uniquely capable of change…No matter how serious a crime committed by a 13-year-old, there is no means of predicting what type of adult he or she will become in 10 or 20 years.”

While the crimes some juveniles have committed are very serious  – murder, rape, home invasion – many offenders twice their age commit the same crimes and serve minimal sentences and receive parole. Why don’t youths receive the same chance for change?

Recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments for two cases (neither of which involves murder) that bring up an interesting question: is sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without parole is a violation of the Eight Amendment, which prevents cruel and unusual punishment?

Some say yes, and hope the Court holds views similar to Justice Kennedy’s stance in Roper v. Simmons. They ask for recognition of the injustice in judging a life not yet developed. But, I think the courts still must look further into this discussion. They must look at all crimes committed by juveniles, even murder.

Sara Kruzan was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for murdering her pimp at age 16. She is now 29. Before and during her tumultuous teens, Sara was a model student and avid writer. She also suffered from severe depression and abuse from her drug addicted mother.  At age 11, she met a 31-year-old man, G.G., who befriended her and started grooming her for prostitution. For the next few years, she worked for G.G. while still attending school.

As she was sentenced, the judge told her she “lacked moral scruples.” Sara lacked the understanding of those words and of the severity of her actions. Throughout her sentence, Sara has educated herself on those words and others to build her character and learn from her mistakes. She is not the same girl that the judge sentenced all those years ago. Yet, she has no chance to show the courts her transformation. We can only see her through short heartfelt interview clips.

When I see Sara speak about her story with such honestly and integrity, I see an ethical, learned woman – not a heartless, immoral killer. If Sara has learned, others have as well. She changed her life through education and experience.

She and other juvenile offenders deserve a chance to change. Granted we need to look at their crimes but we must look more closely at the proper penalty they deserve. No one in their teens should be sentenced to a life of no possibilities.

Eric Marshall is a graduate student of Professional Writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He writes poetry and is currently working on his first novel, tentatively titled The Sleep Season.

When I turned nineteen in July of 2003, my mother gave me a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It was a paperback, the cover illustration was of a slick nineteen forties Cadillac limousine surging down a dark blue midnight highway. Having just completed an honors colloquium on the artists of the Beat movement, my interest in the work of writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac was piqued. I had no way of knowing, however, the dramatic affect that the famous novel would have on my young life.

My first reading of On the Road didn’t begin as the eye-opening, spellbinding experience it would come to be. I struggled with the early chapters, the litany of names, my own ignorance as to which characters aligned with which key figures of the Beat movement. But by the time that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty made their fateful passage over the border to Mexico, I was enrapt.

What I had discovered was an affirmation of life, a defense against darkness, a resonant cry of rebel freedom that pulsates through American life. You could drop everything and hitchhike to San Francisco if you wanted; you could find God in the beady, sweating eyes of a tortured blues tenor; you could live life at the speed of light, and it could all blow up in your face, but that could also be okay.

Most importantly, though, I learned that I could write wild, untamed things that would set the world on fire for my readers the way that Jack Kerouac did for me.

I made a pact with myself that I would read On the Road once a year, every July, for the rest of my life. My earliest re-reads were attempts to rekindle the burning fire of my first reading, to rediscover the overwhelming sense of possibility opened up to me by reading Kerouac’s work at age nineteen. At first, I was disappointed, discouraged, even. Just like anything else in life, the book just wasn’t the same the second time around.

As the mangled ethics of my favorite characters became more apparent, some of the magical sheen wore off of Kerouac’s prose. The real and palpable sadness of Sal Paradise stranded, broke, and abandoned in a Skid Row motel in Los Angeles came across as more than just a lull before the next great, mystical explosion of the American night. Dean and Sal’s final goodbye felt more final than in my first reading; it was sadder, more complex.  What I found was that On the Road wasn’t the same, but then again, neither was I.

I’m twenty-five, now, six years removed from my first reading of On the Road. I still read it every year, right around my birthday. The reading has become somewhat of a benchmark of my personal growth, like how my parents used to mark my height on the frame of the kitchen door when I was a kid. With each reading, I discover something new, about the book and about myself. I don’t live my life like Sal Paradise or Dean Moriarty; I don’t really write like Jack Kerouac.

There are still moments of life affirming catharsis, but I’ve come to terms with the sadness of Kerouac’s story and I’m okay with that. His book serves as a window to myself, to who I used to be. In that way, On the Road is an assurance that I’ll never completely forget the wild kid inside of me. And for that, I am ever grateful to Jack Kerouac.

Bob Schilling is a defense lawyer and former assistant district attorney who lives in New Bedford.  His practice is now in the New Bedford District Court and in the Juvenile Court handling delinquencies and ‘youthful offender’ cases.  He has a daughter in New York City and a son at UMass Amherst.

A former colleague (an assistant district attorney) recently asked me if I was still involved with Judge Kane’s “bleeding heart book club.”  We both laughed. In a more serious vein, he went on to ask whether I thought he might enjoy it, because he is approaching retirement and may have some time to – and it sounds like a cliché but really isn’t – “give back to the community.”

I first heard of Changing Lives Through Literature from Judge Robert Kane, a brilliant, experienced, tough judge in the Superior Court; I heard him gently query convicted felons about whether they had ever taken any interest in the written world of learning, imagination and entertainment.

He spoke to these hard men of the life of the mind and encouraged exploration of the world of letters. He offered them the possibility of this program. Some, who think toughness and compassion are mutually exclusive, would roll their eyes.

Three years ago, when I retired from service to the Commonwealth, I had the occasion to do a good deal of work in the New Bedford Juvenile Court as a defense attorney. Lo and behold, I heard again of CLTL through Stella Ribeiro, a dedicated probation officer who I worked with in the “Second Chance Drug Court.” I told her that I would love to participate, finally, in the program.

I had another motivation as well, especially for working with young people.  It seems to me that kids today are bombarded with media screens before they ever get the chance to experience the wonderful pacific texture of the printed page, or the interior world of imagination.  There are TV screens of course, but cell phones and computers are every bit as ubiquitous.  I am staggered by the number of kids that I talk to that can’t remember the last time they read anything that wasn’t rendered in pixels.

With Stella, Susan Jennings (a wonderfully creative professor from UMass Dartmouth, and a mean baker) and a dedicated young teacher at the New Bedford Vocational High School named Kelly Haggerty DeSouza, I am now with my seventh or eighth CLTL group.  I am having a terrific time!

All of the juveniles who have passed through are court-referred and, superficially, very challenging.  But the small groups have had extraordinary success in opening dialogue about all that life can throw at children born into the most difficult circumstances. Amazingly, virtually every kid says he “hates to read” at the outset and is happy he or she took the course by the time they graduate.

Thanks to Stella and Susan and another regular participant, Frank, for this opportunity to spend time with kids who didn’t have the same advantages we all did.

Jenni Baker is the communications specialist for Goodwill Industries International in Rockville, MD.  Beth  Ayer is a second-year graduate student in the Professional Writing program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the current marketing and media advisor for  Changing Lives Through Literature.

November 5^th marks the one-year anniversary of Changing Lives, Changing Minds. In honor of this landmark, founding editor Jenni Baker and current editor Beth Ayer came together to talk about the blog’s progress and where it’s headed.

Jenni: We’ve come a long way from one year ago and the blog is picking up speed. Readership and interest in CLTL has really taken off in the past few months.

Beth: Absolutely – it has been great to hear from a lot of new people. Picking up where you left off was almost deceptively simple. The blog was founded on an endlessly positive and intriguing idea: the conversation from the CLTL classroom can carry over to the Internet to spread positive change. Still, I say “deceptively simple” because we still need to maintain a concerted effort to reach out to readers.

Jenni: In the beginning, the task was to get CLTL’s core supporters on board with the blog, both by contributing essays and coming back to comment on what others had to say. These individuals formed a strong foundation to build our external readership. Now, the task is to continue to reach out to new audiences. The potential to spread information about CLTL is exponential — new readers interested in the blog may share program information to their friends, who may continue to pass the word along.

Beth: One of the major challenges has been continuing to build on the great progress we’ve already made by maintaining reader interest with new content, and by attracting new readers through the strength of the CLTL concept. But, as you say, the existing foundation has positioned the blog very well for continued growth. I think it helps to keep focused on the blog’s role and purpose within CLTL.

Jenni: Certainly. And it’s important to recognize the important role the blog does play in raising awareness about the organization. In the past, CLTL relied mostly on grassroots, word-of-mouth efforts to raise awareness about the program.  Blogs and social media have made it possible to take this grassroots movement online and get the word out to many more people. We’re seeing that more than ever recently.

Beth: Absolutely. The blog is a perfect tool for getting the information out to as many people as possible. Other social media tools, like Twitter and Facebook, will also increase awareness of CLTL and hopefully draw followers to the blog.

Jenni: It’s somewhat ironic that we’re using technology to educate people about a program that, at its heart, is about what can happen when we divorce ourselves from computers and sit down with a book. How do we justify using online tools to our supporters who say it’s out of sync with CLTL’s ultimate goal of using literature to change lives?

Beth: Well, I can see the concern. But if our ultimate aim is to spread awareness of the program (and hopefully spread the program itself) then we would be doing a massive disservice to that goal by failing to take advantage of these tools. We really have to use both literature and social media (in their own distinct ways) in tandem.

Jenni: I agree. And I think we have to see social media not as the antithesis of what we promote in the CLTL classroom, but as an extension of the conversations that happen there. Getting people talking — whether it’s around a table about a book or on the internet about the program — is at the crux of it all.

Beth: We have had a lot of lively discussions on the blog lately. When people are willing to respond, whether with differing opinions, supporting comments, or new ideas, our mission is automatically furthered. Looking back on our assortment of essays over the past year, I noticed one point in particular that stands out as the future and impetus of CLTL and the blog. In “The Experience of Democracy,” Kathy McLellan compares her experience as a juror to the CLTL classroom:

The jury would engage in focused discussion that would require them to communicate their thoughts and analyze a situation.  There would be disagreement, persuasion and a presentation of various points of view.  Hopefully, the jurors would eventually reach an agreement.

It can be easy to forget how closely CLTL is related to the idea of democracy itself. The clash and cohesion of diverse perspectives is a strength of the CLTL classroom, as well as an asset to Changing Lives, Changing Minds. I look forward to the continued growth of our blog and of Changing Lives Through Literature. More great conversations to come!

Readers, we invite and encourage you to share memorable essays and conversations from the blog over the past year in the comments section.

Allan McDougall is a graduate student from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Allan is a staunch believer in language as social action, with a focus on reading and writing. Allan is currently writing his MA thesis on Changing Lives Through Literature, and writes about professional and academic issues on his blog: allanmcdougall.wordpress.com.

This essay is the final in a series of three posts written by Allan McDougall based on interviews he conducted with CLTL program participants.

The West Roxbury courthouse women’s CLTL program is specialized for women suffering from mental illness, drug addiction or both. Veronica, a single mother, was more reserved than my previous interview subjects, Ken and Sheila. Yet Veronica’s shyness is nothing compared to her crippling inability to communicate before taking CLTL. Veronica told me, “I would never talk to nobody before; I never got along with nobody.” She continued:

In front of the class everyone would get a chance to talk about their problems. I have never opened up to people like I did with Adita, the people in my class, and Leigh, the teacher. I got to learn a lot and become closer with people. Now I’m very open.

The opportunity to share her thoughts and feelings in a reading/writing group environment changed Veronica’s ability to communicate with others. But she also told me about some other positive benefits of CLTL, specifically benefits for her daughter:

I never used to read before, now I read, I have a library card for the first time ever. I write more, read more, talk more. Reading keeps you out of trouble. I even read more to my daughter now. She loves animal books!

Volunteers like Adita Velasquez, Veronica’s probation officer, and Leigh, the Boston English professor who facilitates Veronica’s course, used a structured program of reading and writing to effect the positive changes for students in the West Roxbury program. But, as Veronica puts it, “we’re finished but we’re still not finished.” Each year, Leigh collects and publishes the best writings from the CLTL group. As in the men’s Dorchester programs, this is the first time Veronica has ever seen her writing in print.

Voices from the Table: Sheila

Voices from the Table: Ken

Brooke Joseph is a graduate student in education at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She has a bachelor’s degree in Humanities and Social Sciences with a concentration in Sociology and Elementary Education.

In a recent interview with Professor Robert P. Waxler, co-founder of the Changing Lives through Literature (CLTL) program, I focused on finding out how CLTL changes lives.  Three themes emerged from this interview: Putting Yourself in the Story, Becoming Friends with Characters, and Breaking Down Stereotypes.

Putting Yourself in the Story

Reading and writing can change people’s lives by helping individuals to focus and increase their awareness through self-reflection.  Waxler explained that when you are reading a good piece of literature, you often put yourself in the story and empathize with characters.  Even though during the CLTL sessions everyone is reading the same story, each individual will read the story in a different manner.  Therefore, when the story is discussed, the characters are seen from opposing angles and people “begin to understand that stories, like our lives, are richly textured possibilities.”

Although stories do not offer definitive solutions to people, they do “raise profound questions about our lives.  And as long as we continue to ask important questions, we are doing something worthwhile with our lives.” Waxler says reading the right stories helps us to “pursue our identity as if we are on a journey through life;” by “expanding our perceptions, offering new experiences and deepening our thinking, stories move us and they make us self-reflective. They offer us questions, and then the stories give us the opportunity to pursue answers to those questions.”

Becoming Friends with Characters

Dr. Waxler also gave an example of how a particular character can change people’s lives. When people are reading they allow the characters to become a part of their lives; characters in the stories “become our friends.  Their voices are embedded in our hearts.”  For example, take Santiago from Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea novel. Even though Santiago does not catch a fish for weeks, he continues to wake up every morning to “fight the good fight; his endurance is admirable.”

After reading OLD MAN AND THE SEA, one CLTL participant claimed, “in essence, Santiago saved my life.” The CLTL student had been thinking about going back to his old neighborhood and returning to drugs.  But then he thought of what Santiago had endured, and decided not to take the turn back to his old neighborhood.  Santiago was a friend in his heart, inspiring him that day.

Breaking Down Stereotypes

Another way that CLTL changes lives is by changing people’s perspectives, and, more specifically, breaking down stereotypes. Perhaps this is best illustrated through a passage from Waxler’s 2008 essay in the Journal of the Modern Language Association:

It is interesting to witness, through CLTL, court officers (judges, probation officers, lawyers) and criminal offenders sitting around a long wooden table in a seminar room talking together about a story they have read.  Customarily the criminal offenders at first see the judges, in this context, as the officials in the dark robes who employed the harsh language of judgment to rule over them, and the judges often see the criminal offenders through the other side of that lens, as marginal characters in need of discipline—if not punishment, at least rehabilitation.  The offenders agree, recognizing themselves defined in the narrow prison of such perception.

CLTL facilitates a breaking down of stereotypes, and the participants around the table take on new identities as they discuss the literature before, As Dr. Waxler says, “stories evoke stories, and through that process stories can help build a democratic community.”

At the end of our interview, I told Professor Waxler I teach second grade and I asked him for any suggestions that he might have for ways that I could engage students. He suggested that stories can be magical and this is what young children know and love.  These magical stories offer imaginative possibilities for the children.  My challenge as a second grade teacher is to make sure that my students never “lose that sense of enchantment.” That is a challenge worth pursuing!

Robert LeBlanc is a Ph.D. candidate in literature at the University of Rhode Island. His dissertation research focuses on notions of publicness and subjectivity in Christian leftist texts. He has taught writing and literature courses at the college level.

I suppose I became an active reader at a fairly young age, and I remember looking out for interesting books at school or at the local public library. During my first few years as a reader, my interests were normal ones for a young boy in the 1980s: dinosaurs, baseball, cars. I would read or leaf through a few children’s reference books about cars or the American Revolution or the Red Sox, and then after a few weeks it was onto another topic to read about.

At a certain point this habit of reading took a turn toward stories. I began to realize that I liked some stories for themselves, independently of what topics and settings were featured in their pages. If the story was told with a certain rawness or intensity, if the words really leapt off the page and begged me to read on toward the conclusion, then I could enjoy reading a story just for its own sake.

In the fifth grade, I began to devour a wide range of young adult novels and short stories. I was enjoying—in a secondhand, readerly way—the experiences that different narratives brought to life, and I also started to develop a real appreciation for writers with a daring style. Some writers avoided the typical plots and worn-out phrases and went right for those moments of odd insight that would bring me back to certain passages again and again.

Even after I had raced through certain books, I would turn back to my favorite descriptions and stylistic flourishes within their chapters to marvel at the way the words reached out across the gap of communication to strike me with an almost physical force.

Readers who grew up as part of my generation will remember that the young adult market was at a saturation point in the late 80s and early 90s. Many classic YA novels that had defined the genre in the 60s and 70s were still in print or at least sitting on the classroom bookshelves, and new writers were churning out novels at a rapid pace.

I began to drift toward the novels of a particularly daring writer, one whose works (according to my teachers) even challenged their labeling as young adult fiction in their increasing experimentation with postmodernist form and controversial content. This writer, Robert Cormier, also fascinated me because I learned that he was born in my hometown: Leominster, Massachusetts.

As I started to read voraciously through Cormier’s books, the puzzle pieces all began falling into place. But the mystery that I was unraveling seemed to exist beyond the world of the stories themselves, and I increasingly came to find that Cormier’s books had a role to play in the formation of my own identity.

I began reading to listen closely to what these books said to me, almost feeling that I had found an endlessly fascinating conversation partner as well as a favorite author. His novels challenged me to think critically about my roles in society, to face tough ethical questions head-on without flinching or retreating from the call to speak out on behalf of those who are forgotten and wronged.

I began to love his novels not only for the mysteries of their plots, but also for the opportunities to redefine my identity that each novel presented. Through all of this, I continued to marvel at Cormier’s postmodernist yearnings beyond the confinement of the printed page. These stylistic gestures screamed out to the reader with urgent social messages, but also with the provocative suggestion that good writing, though necessary in our times, was only a frustratingly partial act. For a text to be successful, good readers would need to find themselves in the pages of a text and actively take up the causes that it proposed.

My encounter with Cormier’s novels as an adolescent shaped my identity as an engaged citizen and also impacted my eventual professional identity as a writing instructor. I try to encourage my students to view the act of writing as a call toward ideal readers, toward those who will see a piece of themselves in a text and latch onto that text, offering it their open minds, their critical faculties, and sometimes their nods of understanding.

I still believe that the exchanges between readers and writers in the quiet space of the page can be moments of identity formation that linger in our memories with surprising power.

Erin Royston Battat is a Lecturer in the History & Literature program at Harvard University.  She taught the CLTL women’s class in Dorchester in Spring 2009.

When reading literature, we expect change to happen.  Change is what drives the plot.  Literary terms we learn in high school teach us to look for change, and to appreciate its aesthetic value: a “dynamic” character, the “turning point,” an “epiphany.”  As teachers, however, only rarely do we witness a student’s dramatic intellectual or spiritual awakening in our classroom, before our very eyes.

Instead, we must trust that the seeds we plant today will bear fruit sometime in the future, coaxed and nurtured by other teachers, different texts, and new experiences.  Accustomed to seeing teaching this way, I was awestruck by the profound transformations experienced by several of my students in the Changing Lives class in Dorchester last spring.

One student came to the first class consumed by fear and anxiety, deeply ashamed of her poor literacy skills.  “When I first came to class I was nervous, and scared to read out loud,” she remembers.  “After the first class, I said, ‘I am not going back’…I cried and I cried.”  This student did come back, however, and she had the courage to ask for help. In doing so, she provided the first bit of gel that would bind the students into a community.

In her simple way, she describes this process of writing and community-building: “I felt shy when I read my poem out loud, but people laughed and I liked it.  I liked listening to the other women.  Sometimes I learned something from them.”

A dramatic moment on the last day of class—a moment that seems more the stuff of literature than real life—testifies to this student’s growth.  We were visited by the Chancellor of the University, whose imposing figure is surpassed only by his booming voice and larger-than-life personality.  He filled the room.  All of us held our collective breath as this woman, who refused to read aloud from the syllabus two months before, read an original poem to the highest ranking official at UMASS Boston.

Another student was unable to even start her first homework assignment.  After years of substance abuse, her mind was rusty, burnt, seemingly incapable of creative expression.  She spoke only of her struggle to stay sober; it seemed that nothing else could penetrate her consciousness.  Yet this student came to every class an hour early to get help with her homework, forcing her mind to consider stories and characters outside of herself.

Over the course of the semester, as the winter turned to spring, her mind seemed also to thaw, slowly, subtly.  In her analysis of “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, she wrote of a mother “engulfed with guilt about what she did and did not do” for her daughter, and connected this story to her own childhood, and its “days of struggling.”  These carefully chosen words indicate the stirrings of emotional and intellectual life that seemed dormant on that first day of class.

Finally, a woman in her mid-twenties came to class with a great weight on her shoulders.  Her mother’s drug addiction had destroyed everything in its path, and she was left to pick up the pieces.  Several years before, she was faced with an impossible decision: whether to continue her college education, or to take legal custody of her younger brothers and sisters.  To her, there was no choice.

I watched this student’s face as the judge told her own story about dealing with an unstable parent.  There was a look of astonishment tinged with a dawning hope: Even a judge can suffer a terrible childhood? Maybe I, too, can make something of myself?  By the end of the semester, this student had enrolled in community college, confident that even though her mother failed her, she was not doomed to repeat the past.

I feel deeply grateful to have witnessed these transformations.  They testify to the power of literature, and to the importance of storytelling in the building of community.  These changes, however, are hard to measure; they don’t translate easily into statistical evidence, or proof that Changing Lives reduces recidivism.  It seems somehow fitting that like literature itself, Changing Lives works in subtle, ambiguous, and deeply personal ways.