Nora Raleigh Baskin Learns About Mass Incarceration

 

Let people know the struggle you’re going through to lift the stigma and raise awareness. Julia Lazareck’s guest, Nora Raleigh Baskin, shares her discovery about mass incarceration. Nora is an award-winning writer introduced to mass incarceration through a program she was asked to participate in at a prison. She was shocked at what she learned and was drawn to writing about it. She wrote Ruby on the Outside, which is about a child’s journey of having an incarcerated mother. Nora shares her research journey, soul searching, and the people she met while writing the book. Tune in!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Nora Raleigh Baskin Learns About Mass Incarceration

I want to tell you about the Prison: The Hidden Sentence book. There are many things that you need to know when a loved one is taken to the prison system that nobody tells you. This book will provide valuable information to help you as you go through the stages of the prison system with your loved one. I also share stories, so you know that you’re not going through this alone. You can purchase your copy of Prison: The Hidden Sentence book on Amazon.

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I’m here with Nora Raleigh Baskin, who’s an award-winning author of fifteen novels for young readers. The books are based on real situations, ranging from autism to 9/11, to incarceration, to suicide, and to bullying. Most of her books deal in some way with the loss of a mother. Nora takes her talents and teaches creative writing for upcoming authors, both privately and at Manhattanville College. She successfully raised two sons. She volunteers in New York and Connecticut prisons. Through her story, you’ll learn about her passion to help people.

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Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.

Thank you, Julia. I’m honored and thrilled that you’ve asked me to come here and oftentimes, I feel like what do I have to offer? When you give this platform, it’s great.

After our conversations and hearing what you’ve been through and what you’ve learned, I think it’s important for people to learn from it and to know what you’re doing. You published Ruby On The Outside after you learned more about mass incarceration. Could you share with us what you learned about mass incarceration, why you wrote the book and also tell us about the people that you met along the way?

I can honestly say that writing Ruby On The Outside changed my life, my world, my understanding of mass incarceration and as well as many other issues. It came to me in an unusual way or selfish way. My college roommate named Dr. Jill Becker, was on the board of an organization called Rehabilitation Through The Arts, which fascinated me as a writer. They bring writing and acting into the prisons. I knew from my friend, Jill, how important it was, how it transformed lives inside the prison, but it was her thing and I was a writer. I didn’t know anything about it until she invited me to a fundraiser.

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A supporter of RTA who lived in Ossining, New York, which I didn’t even know is the town where Sing Sing, the famous prison, is. The first thing I started to realize is how much I didn’t know the prisons are kept separate and that’s intentional. The fact that I didn’t know anything about mass incarceration is no accident in our country.

I went to the fundraiser because it would be a free lunch and I’m a writer. A free lunch? Yeah, I’m going. After the free lunch, there was a presentation. An actress presented and a formerly incarcerated man presented. The director of the program started giving information and I was riveted. I learned that we have the greatest number of incarcerated people in the world, greater than China and Russia, with two million people behind bars. I learned that the disparity is enormous between Latinx, Black and White. They gave numbers and statistics, and I was dumbfounded, to be honest, and ashamed that I didn’t know.

They started talking about the number of children who have had or have a parent in prison and often both. As I was sitting there, I was moved because of how many children there are in the world around me who don’t have a parent, or maybe both. It became personal as I was sitting there. As a writer, I’m always thinking, “What I’m going to write next? What’s important to me? What moves me?”

Usually, they’re based on my own life and this idea of children without their parents became connected to me. I can tell you why I’m connected and I think it’s important to this story. When I was three and a half years old, my mother committed suicide. I was lied to about what happened. I wasn’t told the truth, which meant that I blamed myself. For twelve years, I didn’t know the truth.

I didn’t have support. I didn’t get to grieve. I was raised by people that weren’t my parents after my father left as well. There was a stigma and embarrassment to it and as I was sitting there, listening to this presentation, it was a connection to these children, the stigma, the shame, self-blame, being raised by people, caregivers that aren’t your parents going to school and not having a mom. What do you do on Mother’s Day?

At that presentation, I decided that was what I was going to write my next book about. I went up to Katherine Vockins, who’s the director. I said, “I want to write this book. I feel this is what I need to write about.” She said, “The first person you need to meet is Amani Davis.” She lived close by and she gave me her email and phone number right there.

She had been included as a child in a book called All Alone In The World by Nell Bernstein. I read the book and I was already learning and connecting. I reached out to Amani Davis and I was invited to her home. She was kind and open, and mostly she gave me permission to write the book. I told her my story and she had a daughter at the time. What I didn’t know is that in the next room and the kitchen was her mother, who at the time, I think, was the director. I’m not sure what her role was, but she was high up in an organization called Osborne.

I didn’t know that she was right there. I could have talked to her, but she was giving Amani the privacy to speak her story. Amani’s father had been incarcerated. She shared her story with me and it was mostly the permission she gave me to write this or how important it was, how she wanted it out there. She wanted people to know and lift the stigma and raise awareness, so then I had to start doing research.

Nora, your story is enthralling. I’m following along. You were talking about that you had to do research. Could you share with us what research do you did?

I knew the emotional truth that I wanted my character to have. I knew what it felt like to not have a mom, to have that stigma and an inability to talk about it. I knew that’s what I wanted my character internally to be grappling with, but of course, you have to make it realistic. I had to learn about it. The first person I reached out to happens to be Charles Grodin, the actor, because his son and my son played basketball together. He happened to live in a town nearby. They played AAU basketball together.

I reached out to Charles Grodin because I had heard that he’s involved in social justice. He was involved in fighting or turning over, whatever word you wanted to use, the Rockefeller drug laws, which was unfair. I think you had to have to come up with 2 to 4 ounces of drugs and you could get fifteen years to life in prison. I knew he was involved in that and he was famous. It’s heartbreaking. It’s wrong. I can tell you later how broken our criminal justice system is, but that was the beginning, learning about minimum sentencing. I had talked to Charles Grodin on the phone and said, “You need to talk to Sister Tesa. I’m going to give you her name and number and call her.”

He helps Serena too. It’s interesting how everybody is connected.

I listened to that episode which is beautiful and I was touched that she also had been moved by her. I called Sister Tesa and she was the director of an organization that Serena also mentioned called Hour Children. I remember Charles Grodin saying, “It’s Hour Children.” I looked them up. He gave me the number and she said, “Come to Queens. Come over the bridge.” I was in Connecticut and she sat down with me at her desk. She’s such a commanding, soft-spoken, kind woman. I have to tell you that was the start of a journey that changed my life because it’s a tiny thing, but it’s a huge thing. I’m asking innocent questions or clueless questions.

One of the first things she told me was about the phone calls, that how expensive it is for families to talk on the phone to their incarcerated family members. They show how innocent I was. I was floored because I made a free phone call. I have freedom and money. I live in the world and I make free phone calls. They’re incarcerated and cannot do that. They have hundreds of dollars in phone bills. The inequity and the horror of that was the first thing that struck me. Of course, that’s the tip of the iceberg. She started telling me about that. I can jump in and tell you proudly that Connecticut, where I live, is the first state in the United States to have free phone calls for incarcerated people.

 

People don’t realize the impact on the family and it’s all over the United States. Especially for kids, they want to talk to their parent and their parent wants to talk to them because we want to keep the prison family together. That’s something that has the price. I know the price since my brother was incarcerated has gone down because there have been many groups that advocated for that. I’m glad you brought that up because a lot of people don’t realize the expenses of having a loved one that’s incarcerated.

The phone calls and even going to visit an incarcerated family member.

They might not be in the same town. They could be in another state. There is a lot of planning, travel and costs that people have.

I haven’t finished telling you this long story of how I wrote the book, but you’re reminding me of something. There were many things along the way that broke my heart. As someone who didn’t have a mom, you can understand why I was connected to this story. I would have given anything to hear my mother say, “I love you,” behind bars or anywhere. I didn’t have that and it altered my life. My mother made a mistake that altered the rest of my life, and I never got to reconcile it. I never got to forgive her and love her.

Before I go on with how I did the research, which is important for people to learn how hard it was because it’s not something they want writers to learn about, I visited a prison in Minnesota. It was a jail. One of the things I learned is the difference between prisons and jails. This was a county jail. I was invited after I wrote the book to speak to the women, the mothers. At this jail, they had prevented children from visiting their mothers even behind plexiglass.

They decided it was too much work and money to have the visitors frisked, patted down and go through all the security. The visiting children come to the prison, pick up a computer and they get to speak to their mothers on the other side. I thought if I was a child going to visit my mother, I knew she was on the other side of a wall, right there. I’m in the building where my mother is and somebody is preventing me from seeing and touching her.

I could barely speak. I knew the detriment that would have to a child. I don’t know if people are aware of this. I’m aware of it because I was an angry, rebellious, confused child from my experience. The anger at the authority that would be awakened from knowing these people in uniforms is preventing me from seeing my mother. What world does that? I think we’re lucky in New York State and around here, I don’t believe there is visitation behind plexiglass. I had gotten to see that because of the area that I live in.

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I wanted to say during COVID that there has been some separation, unfortunately.

I mostly worked with mothers or only worked with mothers when nobody was visiting and advocating. Nobody knows what’s going on. Let alone they’re not visiting their family and their children. They are alone. COVID has been terrible. I haven’t been able to go in for several years and I miss those women terribly. I met Sister Tesa and I learned some things about that. After meeting with her in her office, she said, “Go back here, meet Kellie Phelan.” She is previously incarcerated. She had a child in prison. She had a daughter outside, and now she was working at Hour Children. She was the director of the volunteers.

I have to tell you she said something to me that altered the whole course of the book I was writing. I told you a little bit about my personality as a child, having been lied to and moved around from family to family. I also experienced physical abuse with my stepmother’s boyfriend. I was angry and I acted out. I got in trouble. I was suspended from sixth grade, but Kellie said to me and this is something a writer usually doesn’t listen to. I want to write my own book. Don’t tell me what to write about with my story. I’m going to write it.

I was assuming that I would make Ruby like me. It was my internal story. I am emotionally connected. I assumed that Ruby was going to be a trouble, get in trouble, act out and not do well in school. As I was leaving Hour Children in Queens, I remember it was dark by that point. We were walking out the door and I said, which I would normally not say, “Is there anything you feel strongly about when I write this book that you do or don’t want to be included?” I didn’t expect an answer. She said, “Can you make the character not a bad kid who gets in trouble because so many people believe that if your parents are incarcerated, you’re going to be a trouble.” I said, “Yes.”

I altered the whole course of my story in my head. I made Ruby positive and well-taken care of. She lives with her aunt, which she calls Matoo, my second mother. People mistake what she’s calling her caretaker. I made her do well in school and that was all Kellie. I also left Hour Children saying to Sister Tesa, “You got to get me into prison. I can’t write this book unless I see.” I didn’t know anyone in prison, so I couldn’t experience visiting them. I never had.

They said to me, “I don’t know if that’s possible. You don’t belong to an organization. You’re a writer. We’ll try, but it didn’t look good.” I started writing the book, but I didn’t know if I would be able to. I couldn’t write a book unless I had experienced what it was like to visit a prison, but I did start researching. This was when things got a little dark for me. Not for me personally, but my knowledge of the criminal injustice system.

My friend says it and I have it in my book, too, Prison: The Hidden Sentence. It’s like, “Opening a curtain and seeing what’s behind the curtain. It’s a whole another world.”

It’s behind prison bars, lock bars, high walls, barbwire.

I’m saying you’re opening it up to the world now.

I can tell you what the moms have told me. I hope I’m also opening it up to people who, like me, had no knowledge and especially children in schools who hopefully are reading the book and having empathy because there is a child in their classroom who has experienced this, whether they know it or not. The expression is hidden in plain sight.

Teachers should understand there is someone coming in contact with a child who’s not talking about this. If they read the book, they feel a little less lonely. The children who haven’t experienced it feel more empathy and understanding. The biggest problem for me as a writer is I needed to come up with a crime for which my mother would be incarcerated.

 

Another choice I made, which I’m proud of, is that I did not make my mother innocent of her crime. My mother wasn’t innocent. She made a mistake, but I needed to also have her incarcerated for a great length of time that my character could come to grapple with it, but at the same time, I know nothing else. Her mother has been incarcerated for as long as she remembers. I had to come up with a crime that was severe enough but not awful that I would have a harder time reconciling it, creating the climax and resolution.

I started researching women in prison and I learned mostly that the criminal system is a plea bargain system. You watch on TV, lawyer movies, crime shows, they get arrested and next week they’re in court. How unrealistic? I learned sadly that mostly for women are domestic violence and drug crimes and that the men have information. They can plea bargain. They can give information leading to greater arrests, but the women often don’t and often get longer sentences for being involved with a drug dealer.

Certainly, a violent crime would have my mother incarcerated for a long time. That’s what I chose to have her boyfriend. She goes to a CVS where her boyfriend is going to break in. He’s going to hold up the pharmacist to steal drugs. He’s a drug addict. He shoots someone and she’s there. She goes to prison. He gets the plea bargains.

That was the beginning of that curtain opening up. In the book, other than Ruby’s mother’s exact crime, which I also researched carefully, all of the other children’s experiences, I took it right from the newspaper. A woman picked up a friend and took them to another friend’s house. That friend had a gun in their bag and she was arrested for aiding and abetting.

I’m glad you brought that to light because that’s why people need to be aware. You could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could happen to anybody. It’s not just people over there. What I understand, the way you write is that you take your experiences too. You put yourself in that situation when you’re writing, which is admirable to be able to be vulnerable and share yourself in your story.

That’s the only way I know how to write and the only way I believed I could address this issue. I thought the only way I’d have the right to write this story would be if I also understood what it feels like to have your mother taken away.

You were saying that it was important for you to get into prison?

I’m researching and figuring out my plot and figuring out my mother’s crime. Maybe it was a confluence of things that happened, but there’s a movie called the Mothers of Bedford. It’s a documentary by a woman named Jenifer McShane and it happened to be screened right in a town near me. I went to see it. It also gave me amazing personal stories of injustice that women have been incarcerated for. I watched the movie and after the end of the movie, there was a question and answer. I went up to Jenifer and she put me in touch with the program director at Bedford Hills because that’s where she had filmed the show. Her name was Jane Silfen.

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I asked Jane, “Can I please get into prison?” She’s like, “It’s hard. I don’t know how that’ll happen.” Bedford Hills and Jane runs a program, which allows pregnant women to keep their children in prison for up to eighteen months. It’s important as a child who lost her mother to know how you have to bond with your child, how important that is how not bonding can lead to a whole series of mistakes that a child can make in their life, feeling unloved and unworthy. I was amazed to hear that. Here’s the payoff for all this. I’m waiting. I don’t how am I going to get into prison. I was almost ready to give up writing the book.

I’m taking a walk, hiking in the woods with my dog and I get a phone call on my cell phone. It says, “Unknown number.” You don’t pick up unknown numbers. We don’t do that. It will go to voicemail, but something told me, “Pick it up.” Understand that this is months, not a couple of days. I was ready to give up. It’s the Director of the Department of Correction in New York State.

He says, “Are you Nora Baskin?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I hear you you’re you want to write a book about Bedford Hills, a correctional facility for women.” I said, “Yes. It’s fiction. I write for kids.” He says, “Be there at 9:00 AM. Don’t wear green.” That’s it, end of the conversation. I hang up. I was elated, scared and I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I didn’t wear green. I didn’t even know why. Why was he asking me not to wear green? I didn’t know anything. That’s when I was able to write the book. I went by myself.

Tell people why you can’t wear green.

I figured out when I got there that the incarcerated people wear green. When they blow that whistle, everyone sits down and they are encouraged to do a headcount. I have to tell you that how humiliating is that for a mother. I’m also a mother. I also could understand from her point of view as well, which they wouldn’t have been able to write the book if I weren’t.

When they do these headcounts during visitation, blow a whistle, all the visitors sit down, all the mothers stay standing and they’re all wearing green. What does it feel like to know your child is watching that happen? Mom’s supposed to have authority. The mom’s supposed to be the caretaker. I take care of you and here she’s bending to this greater authority. Those were the insights I think I could bring to writing this book.

I went to prison and that’s where I learned. I learned you had to have a quarter. I learned you couldn’t bring anything in with you and you put your car keys in a locker. If you don’t have a quarter, you’re out of luck. I was told to bring a quarter. I learned that I have to sign in, give my license, go through a metal detector.

On the other side of the metal detector, I had to stand with my arms out, my legs out and be patted down. It was the first time I’d ever been patted down. It was a woman. They had a man and a woman. I got a stamp on my hand that you couldn’t see until you put it through a light. I had to go through one gate and then another. The bars closed behind you and locked.

I have to say, for Bedford Hills, they let me in as a writer with a notebook and a pencil, not visiting anyone. I was allowed to sit at a table. I saw the table numbers and people coming in. I got to watch and take notes. Here’s something I put in the book verbatim, “The guards were kind and I will tell you I wasn’t as scared as I thought I would be. It was a friendly place for the most part. I learned that it depends on which correctional officer happens to be there. Who’s at the desk and who’s in the visiting room.”

You described it well. That was what my first visit was like. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, but it was not comfortable. Each visit depends on which correctional officers are there. Did you have the opportunity to speak to any of the officers?

I did and I was moved by what one woman said. She was in the visiting room. I put it in the book exactly the way she described it to me. If it’s okay, this is a short section to show you what I gleaned right from her. “I don’t remember much of that visit except for the very end. When it was time to leave and my mother got that sad look on her face, and I got that horrible stomach ache. We had moved from the table into the children’s center by that time.”

“A little area that looked like a nursery school, separated from the rest of the visitor’s room by a wall of windows. Just before we were about to leave, I jumped up, pulled open the doors and headed right for the big tall platform where the officer in charge was sitting. Sometimes she came down from her post and walked around, but right then, she was sitting up at her desk working at something. Something I couldn’t see because it was too tall and she looked down at me.”

“I said, ‘Please, can I take my mommy home with me today? I know it’s already been soon.’ I talked as fast as I could before Matoo could catch up to me before anyone could stop me. I went on. ‘I know because every time we come here, it’s sooner and now I want to take my mommy home with me. Please, can you tell my mommy it’s soon now? Can you let my mommy come home with me today?'” The correctional officer I spoke to told me that story. She told me that a little girl ran up to her and asked if she could take her mommy home.

People had been telling this little girl that her mother was coming home soon and it wasn’t soon. Lying to a child because it makes you feel better or it’s easier for you is unhealthy and hurtful to a child. I directly put that in my book. The correctional officer was choked up when she told me that story. This was beautiful, sad and heartbreaking. There’s a vending machine with potato chips, soda and some plastic-wrapped sandwiches but for the children and the families, to be able to sit down and eat with their mothers is important.

It was also humbling and shameful to me in a way. I felt ashamed that I didn’t understand that before. It doesn’t matter what you’re eating. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Twinkie or a can of soda from the vending machine, but to be able to sit down and have a meal with your mother. I saw the vending machines and now I could write my book. I felt I had all the information I needed, except I would’ve needed it vetted.

I felt so responsible. I needed to show this to children of incarcerated parents. I went back to Kellie at Hour Children and I asked her if I could print up unedited copies of the manuscript and give that to certain kids that she knew would be interested in reading it and she did. She had a book club. She brought together kids after school.

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I owe so much to her and I thanked her in the book. The kids read the book and then we met. I asked them questions and I listened to what they had to say. I wanted to know, did I get it right? I thanked all these children in the dedication as well in the acknowledgments. They loved it. It hit the emotional parts, but they had a couple of corrections. I was grateful and I’ll never forget them.

One of the corrections was Ruby is ashamed and embarrassed. She makes a new friend and she doesn’t want to tell her friend where her mother is. Will she lose her friend if she tells about her? It gets a little more complicated because Ruby, at some point, worries in fact that there’s a connection between her mother’s crime and her new friend.

That’s what a writer has to do. I have to raise the stakes. When Ruby’s friend comes to visit her, there’s a photograph of her mother. I’m sure your readers are familiar with those photographs. The mothers were in green and it was a stage. There’s a backdrop, maybe for Christmas. It looks like what it is. When Ruby’s friends come over, take a photograph and she puts it face down. She’s nervous. One of the boys in my little reading group said, “I would never put the picture of my mother face down.” I changed it and they were the ones who told me how important it was to eat a meal.

What a writer needs are these sensory details. Another sensory detail that the children told me is you go into the visiting room and your mother’s not sitting there waiting for you. In fact, she might not even get to show up. She may be doing something and they don’t let her come. She may be doing her job in a group or something. They wait. they sit there at their number table and when they hear the metal door clang shut, that’s the moment their heart leaps. “Is that my mother coming through the door?”

That was the sensory detail and heart-wrenching emotional thing that I wouldn’t have known unless I went and spoke to these children. I added those things in and I was able to write an accurate depiction of what Ruby’s life was like, how she reconciled with her mom. Another thing I learned and think about is now, kids go on the internet. They can look up what their mother did. Lying to your child is not a good idea. You’re only hurting them by not telling them the truth.

Nora, you bring out how important it is to keep the prison family together. You also bring us an authentic view from the child’s perspective. It’s things that most people don’t even think about. People can find your book on Amazon. Let’s talk about what you’ve been doing since you’ve written the book. I know that you continue volunteering. Could you share the volunteer work that you’re involved with and what people can do on the outside if they want to get involved?

Ruby changed my life. As a writer, what could I do to write a book? There’s more. I could personally get involved to feel right. I first began working in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. I had Simon & Schuster donate books. I had book clubs. I worked in the children’s center as a volunteer. That was in New York State and I’m in Connecticut. From Hour Children, I learned about Osborne, which is also in New York City. I did a book club there. I also want to tell you when I felt a little concerned that every child wouldn’t be able to see themselves in Ruby. Maybe concerned isn’t the right word. I wanted every child who read the book to be able to see themselves.

 

When I went into these book groups, in particular at Osbourne, when I started to think about it, I felt a little uncomfortable, but it felt important to me to do. I wanted to know. I asked the facilitator if she would ask the children who had read the book before I came in, what they thought the ethnicity of Ruby was? She gave me the answer that each kid saw themselves. The Black kids saw Ruby as Black, the Latinx kids saw her as Latinx, and that was important to me. You may not have a picture of the child on the cover. It’s just a silhouette. I was pleased that every child who reads the book can relate.

 

I went to Osborne and I will tell you that the next most moving experience I’ve ever had in my life was when I got to go with Osborne to Albion prison. A lot of the women in Bedford, right before they’re going to be released or when they have lighter sentences, will often be sent up to Albion, which is good and bad. Good because some of them are about to be released, and bad because it is eight hours from New York City. It is so far from Bedford and the kids were lucky if they could get into Bedford to visit their moms.

I know that Hour Children had buses that picked up kids all around New York City to visit their mothers. Osborne has a program that you need a 1 to 1 ratio because when you’re young, you can’t go in without a parent. You can’t go in without a caregiver. Something else I learned is you couldn’t visit your mom. They needed volunteers and these kids had to take a plane. Sometimes it was the first time they’d ever been on a plane.

We had to stay overnight in a hotel. We met in Brooklyn. We had a bus take us to JFK airport in New York City. I was assigned to one little girl. The other volunteers were assigned other children as young as 4 or 5 years old. They’re leaving their caregivers, fathers or whomever, and going with a stranger, getting on a plane, staying in a hotel and then it was another long bus ride up from the hotel to Albion.

You had asked me before, I think the joy, excitement, exuberance on that bus, on that plane and we got to Albion. It was a whole another ordeal getting through. These kids had a few hours and it took so long to get everybody through security and into another bus and to the visitors’ center where the mothers were graduating from the mothering program that they had done.

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I got again to sit in a visiting room and watch. To see a child walk in that door and run to their mother. The joy and the love were overwhelming. It filled the room. At the same time, I saw other deeply sad things. I saw one woman say her child needed his diaper changed. That’s how young they were. They wouldn’t let her go into the bathroom to change his diaper because the incarcerated women use one bathroom, visitors use another. I watched this child be taken from her arms to go changed by a volunteer. Everybody was kind, but as a mother, that was quite a thing to watch.

From working at Osborne, I’ve been doing book groups at Bedford and Osborne. I’m in Connecticut and I’ll lastly tell you the place that I’m volunteering now. It’s perfect for me as a writer. It’s a program called CLICC, Connecting through Literacy Incarcerated parents, their Children and Caregivers. What they do is connect mothers and fathers on the inside through literature to the children on the outside. They get a one-to-one mentor. The incarcerated parents have to request to be in the group. They join the group. Scholastic donates six titles. A huge catalog.

The children can pick and get the books. The parents on the inside get the books. They both read them and it facilitates conversations that may be uncomfortable. Kids don’t know what to ask. Parents don’t know what to ask. This way, they have a story or a book to talk about. My volunteer work was to go into the prison. In that case, this is in Connecticut.

I went to Danbury Federal Prison, which you might have heard of. It’s Orange Is the New Black Prison. Piper Kerman and Leona Helmsley were there. It does have this look of country. It’s rural. I wound up doing a writing group there and giving the women a word. They had ten minutes and I did it as well. The Director of CLICC was with me and they wrote.

As Serena spoke about in your other episode, across the board, every one of these women had childhood abuse, at least those that I came in contact with. Through writing these ten-minute writing prompts, sharing them, we became close. I learned a lot of wisdom. I learned about patience and love. I also learned a lot about what their lives were like inside. It’s not easy.

I had no idea it’s noisy when they go to sleep. You’re trying to get medication when you have a urinary tract infection. Do you know how painful that is? I was in awe. I will also say none of these women were declaring their innocence. They were not saying, “I don’t belong here.” They had taken responsibility. They wanted to be better people and they all were quite beautiful writers as well. Until COVID, that’s where I was working. I miss being there and I miss the women. They add a lot to my life.

I hope things open up soon. Through this whole talk, I’ve been shaking my head. I could relate to many things you were saying. A lot of the information you provided is in my book, Prison: The Hidden Sentence. There’s more information there. I also did an episode with Alexis, Lisa and Eli. Lisa was in Bedford Hills. I could relate to a lot of what you were saying there. It’s interesting how there is much connection and there’s much information.

Through this whole talk, I could feel your passion. It takes one person and story at a time to raise awareness, to close the empathy gap, to create more compassion in this world. I want to thank you so much for sharing your story and writing this beautiful book. We’ll share it with the children in Prison Families Alliance and get it out there. To anybody that’s read this, get this in the schools, get this to the children so that they know that they’re not alone. I wanted to wrap things up with talking about your last thought.

If I had to have one takeaway, it would be that when I began volunteering, I kept saying, “What do I have to offer? I’m not doing anything. I’m not doing the wonderful work of Osborne, Hour Children, Echoes of Incarceration, The Marshall Project and all the amazing organizations. What am I offering? I’m nothing.” I was told over and over. I do believe I offered humanity, showing up and caring because these women feel left behind. They feel forgotten and that is devastating.

They are not forgotten. The more people that learn and know about this, hopefully, the more that will change. You can’t wipe a human being off the face of the earth because they made a mistake. I made many mistakes. I’ll jump in and add if I weren’t White, I would also have been incarcerated. There were many times I was shoplifting because of my situation. I was given that 2nd and 3rd chance that these women, for the most part, were not.

Everybody should be given the opportunity to rehabilitate. You have received a letter. That’d be a good way to close.

I received a letter from a mother and she spoke much more eloquently and said much more than I could ever speak about how fiction can create empathy in a way. The small story and single story can speak to a larger issue. I wish I could give her name. I can’t, but she deserves all the credit wherever she is. If one day she’s reading this, my heart, love and appreciation go out to you.

She had read the book and this is what she wrote, “The first few days of my journey with Ruby. I clutched the book tightly that my fingers hurt when I finally put it down. I realized how tense I became every time I faced Ruby’s pain. I pictured my children struggling to reconcile my choices, incarceration, sentence, and my love for them. It became evident to me that while I was trying to prevent my children from hurting, they set out to do the same.”

“Protect me from pain. I understood why asking my children about their lives at home did not prompt a meaningful conversation. They’re like Ruby avoided deep conversations that would hang up unwanted feelings. Ruby helped me understand my responsibilities as an incarcerated mother. She taught me to trust my children and gave me the courage to see the world through their eyes.”

“What did I get out of my journey with Ruby? A few things. Never allow your children to imagine your world in prison when you can tell them what it is like. Be truthful at all times by not minimizing your mistakes because you will ultimately hurt them and your relationship with them. Make sure they understand that good people can do bad things. Be sure to let them know that your love for them is far greater than the pain you’ve caused them.”

“Don’t demand or expect perfection from them because we live in an imperfect world. Give them room to express pain, anger, sadness, and loss because losing you has been the biggest challenge they’ve ever faced and never stopped being a mother. Being in prison does not for you from your responsibilities. Be the best you can be if you expect them to make wise choices, Make sure you are exhibiting the same.”

Thank you so much for sharing that. It’s heartfelt and you’re right. I don’t think anybody could have said it better. Thank you so much for your time.

You’re welcome. I’m so grateful for this opportunity. It’s been wonderful talking to you.

Me, too.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Prison: The Hidden Sentence
• Amazon – Prison: The Hidden Sentence
• Nora Raleigh Baskin
• Ruby On The Outside
• All Alone In The World
• Osborne
• New Hour: A Fresh Start For Incarcerated Women With Serena Liguori – Previous episode
• Hour Children
• CLICC
• Lisa, Alexis, and Eli on Maintaining Their Connection as a Prison Family – Previous episode
• Prison Families Alliance
• Echoes of Incarceration
• The Marshall Project
• https://www.TED.com/talks/nora_raleigh_baskin_why_artists_must_not_fear_the_social_media_call_out_culture_even_if_they_do
• https://www.NewHourLI.org
• https://www.IMDb.com/title/tt1704170/

About Nora Raleigh Baskin

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