The Prison Book Club (24 page)

In one respect I had to hand it to him.The question evoked some of the most cogent assessments of the evening. As we went around the table, the book club members ranked
Outliers
at anywhere from three to eight, acknowledging that it was entertaining, though maybe not “explosively.” The ranking averaged out at about six. Frank was one of the ones who gave it a seven for its “rudimentary form of science,” but he argued that, like all of Gladwell's books, it failed to provide a clear solution. Richard, who'd majored in sociology, was not impressed with Gladwell's use of statistics and dubbed the author “the Michael Moore of the publishing industry.”

A few around the table ranked it highly, based on its self-help potential. And these were to me the most poignant moments of the evening. Bookman had shared the section on practical intelligence with someone on his range who had difficulty communicating effectively. He said that it prompted the other inmate to study how to change that aspect of himself. And Earl said with hopefulness: “You might not have that burning drive or personality, you might not be Stephen Hawking intelligent, but you might have other things going for you.”

Given the lukewarm ranking, Raymond asked how the book got to be a bestseller, or was everyone in the room crazy. Frank suggested that the reason for the book's success went back to some of the lessons learned in Gladwell's previous book
The Tipping Point
. Word of mouth. In particular, Frank likened it to
The Tipping Point
's Hush Puppy anecdote, which described how a few cool young people in Manhattan in 1995 inadvertently started an epidemic desire for Hush Puppies, the previously uncool suede shoes with the crepe soles. Or, as Phoebe, the volunteer book club facilitator suggested, the book had likely caught on with young people because they were the right age to envision putting in ten thousand hours on something. On the other hand, Bookman joked, maybe it was just that everyone in the room
was
crazy, as Raymond had said. After all, he pointed out, everyone in the room was in jail.

The question of the role of nature and nurture in success cropped up over and over again. It was never more interesting than when Byrne mused about his own actions in life in the context of Gladwell's chapter on feuds and their underlying “culture of honour,” tracking how cultural legacies are almost as powerful as genetic legacies and looking at criminal behaviour that results from those clannish behaviours. “Me being adopted, would I act like my genetic family in a situation of a culture of honour?” asked Byrne. “I don't know.”

Byrne's question was particularly germane given the high-profile honour killing case then before a Kingston court: the parents (and their son) in a family of Afghan immigrants living in Montreal were accused of killing their three teenage daughters for dating and refusing to wear traditional clothing. The accused were convicted later that month. And by coincidence, the book in the centre of the table for next month's book club was Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir
Infidel
. It chronicled her early life in a nomadic Somali clan, and her political life in the Netherlands, where she became a target for Muslim extremists due to her opposition to the enforced submissiveness of Muslim women.

The men picked up their books and said goodbye, stopping to shake my hand or share a word. Tom looked at his copy of
Infidel
and said, “The fact that there's a foreword by Christopher Hitchens raises the book in my estimation.”

And Frank asked me how Vince had reacted to his message, “The Beggar-master says hi.” “Did he think of me right away?” asked Frank.

“Yes, and he joked that you're going to be his Beggar-master,” I said.

14

ISLAND LIFE

A
CCORDING TO BEN AND GASTON, it wasn't until sometime after the New Year that the Collins Bay guards identified the potential risk of the cayenne pepper in the inmates' Christmas bags. The capsaicin in cayenne pepper is the raw form of the active agent in pepper spray. With a little alcohol and a few other easily obtained ingredients, the inmates might be able to manufacture an equivalent. Hell, they could just blow the powder into guards' eyes. The guards themselves had only begun carrying pepper spray canisters for personal protection the previous year. Once the danger had been recognized, the institution went into an eight-day lockdown for a spice sweep.

All the prisoners who had bought the brick-red powder were asked to give it back. Some did, but—surprise—some did not. “Seeing like they put everyone on their guard,” said Ben, “everyone is either hidin', stashin', mixin', puttin' it away.” He himself did not hand back his two packs. The guards had to find his forty-five grams the hard way—by searching his cell. They fined him five dollars, nearly two days' wages for an inmate with a prison job. Gaston said the guards searched with their helmet face shields down to protect their eyes.

The cayenne-pepper search impacted the Jamaican and other West Indian inmates disproportionately, because it was a key ingredient in their cooking. And I suppose that was a fitting atmosphere in which to read that month's book club book,
Small Island
, Andrea Levy's masterful novel about Jamaican immigrants in postwar Britain. Set in 1948 London, with all its deprivations, the novel examines how black Jamaican soldiers who fought for England as Commonwealth citizens find their “Mother Country” a less hospitable place after the war, when they return to live and work there. A white British couple, Queenie and Bernard, and a black Jamaican couple, Gilbert and Hortense, intersect in a boarding house in Earl's Court, and subtle social frictions based on class and race ensue. All four protagonists take turns narrating, and the dialects and sentence structure are unique and fine-tuned to each character. Given that at least half of the men in the book club had roots in the Caribbean, I felt it was an obvious choice when I recommended it for their book list, even though it was long, at more than five hundred pages. I figured that the men would find lots of readers on the outside who had read it too, because of its acclaim.
Small Island
had won the 2004 Orange and Whitbread prizes as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

It was cold on book club day, but there was very little snow on the ground.As we struggled out of our winter coats, I noted how stylishly Carol and Derek were dressed. Carol had new oversized pink plastic-frame glasses and a cardigan with a massive faux fur collar. Derek was wearing a pair of purple-striped socks that added some zing to his preppy attire. I was wearing the same ensemble I always wore: beige pants, my green tweed jacket, fully buttoned, and no jewellery.

I brushed some lint off my trousers and decided that it was time to buy another “prison uniform.” That thought summoned a memory of the clothing I had been wearing the evening of the attack in London.When the trial was over, an officer from London's Marylebone police station called to ask if I'd like to retrieve the clothing that they'd taken for fibre analysis. The items were sealed in a paper bag emblazoned in huge letters: POLICE EVIDENCE. I walked out onto Seymour Street with my bag, passing shoppers with their more fashionable bags from Selfridges, which was just two blocks away on Oxford Street. Sure, their clothing might have been new and chic, but mine had been combed for fibres and DNA. In any event, I never wore those items again. They are still sealed in that bag somewhere in my basement.

Carol had asked Derek to take the lead for the
Small Island
discussion. Another potential volunteer was visiting the book club that day to see if he might become involved. His name was Tristan and he was a retired art teacher and artist. “As some of you know, I can't always be here,” explained Derek. “So if you want Tristan to come back …”The implication was that the book club members had better be civil to one another. Derek looked meaningfully at Dread. Dread had a habit of conducting side conversations or picking on Ben. The book club ambassadors had brought in several new members and Derek welcomed them warmly. There was Michael, a man with a slight lisp from Toronto's South Asian community, and three white guys that Gaston and Peter had recruited: Colin, a young man from small-town Manitoba, Ford, a Maritimer with a completely bald head and Brad from Toronto, who gave off an air of cool. I wouldn't normally have paid such attention to race, but the novel made us all aware of colour that day. Gaston caught my eye across the circle and waved. I waved and smiled at him and he smiled back. He looked different somehow, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

“Okay,
Small Island
,” said Derek. “What did you think? Ben?”

“I'm of Jamaican background,” said Ben. “And I'm putting her up as one of my best authors.” He had vetted the book in advance for Carol and me, and Carol had given him a copy of Andrea Levy's
The Long Song
to read as well. He thought Levy had perfectly captured what he called “that essence of Jamaica,” especially in
The Long Song
, which was set in his family's home parish of Trelawny.

Javier, who was born in Jamaica, confirmed that the author had nailed the Jamaican patois, which he understood from his childhood in Montego Bay, when he'd been told stories about the mischievous Jamaican folk tale character known as Anancy, derived from Anansi the spider in African folk tales.

“Good book, obviously,” said Peter, the first white inmate to offer a comment. “But I knew that we were all going to end up talking about race. I wrote down a couple of things that the author said.” He read them aloud and both passages suggested that the British fought the war so that each could live with his own kind. “So it's not about hatred,” concluded Peter. “It's about differences. And I think calling it racism is just putting a face on it.”

To back up his point, he highlighted how the author also focused on class differences, reminding us of the scene in which a working-class British woman had been bombed out of her Hammersmith digs and was billeted in a posher area, to the alarm of a resident of her new neighbourhood. “As soon as you step out of your own demographic, you're treated differently, you stick out,” Peter argued. “And it doesn't have anything to do with race.”

In a way, Peter was driving at a truth: that Levy examines all the subtle snobberies that divide people, not just those related to skin colour.The Jamaican soldiers in the book consider themselves superior to those from smaller Caribbean islands, for example. And Hortense, as Ben observed in the meeting, was “uppity” compared to Gilbert. But I was aware of the fact that Peter's quotes from the novel about each living with his own kind came from the one white protagonist who is a racist: Queenie's husband, Bernard, who is the least likable character in the novel. In contrast, Queenie seems blind to race. Peter's comments made me feel a little uneasy and I could sense that the reaction would be heated from the black book club members.

“So you're saying those guys in the book weren't racist?” challenged Dread, whose oversized Rasta tam was a dramatic statement of Jamaican identity, even though he had to wear the same short-sleeved prison-issue blue shirt as everyone else.

“I found a lot of stuff in there offensive,” echoed Javier, his deep voice assured, his earring glinting. “It opened my eyes to a lot of things that were going on back then. Like you're good enough to fight a war, but you're not good enough to shower in the same place.”

Meanwhile Ben had been mulling over Peter's distinction between race and “differences” and was starting to see Peter's point. “If I live somewhere, I don't want someone who is poor coming to live beside me,” said Ben. “I'm gonna start thinking there goes the depreciation of my house.”

Everyone laughed in snorts and explosive guffaws. Ben looked startled.

The scene that particularly bothered Dread was the one in which the education authorities dismiss Hortense's Jamaican credentials when she applies for a position as a teacher. “She went to apply for that job and they just look at her like she's crazy,” he said. That scene had bothered me too. The education official hands back Hortense's letters of recommendation unopened and resumes her desk work. It was brutally dismissive.

“That's a terrible scene,” agreed Derek. “Where she just gets treated like shit. It's heartbreaking.”

And then Levy makes it hurt even more, I reminded everyone, by having poor Hortense accidentally walk into the closet as she leaves the room. Ever sensitive to how the scene might make the men feel about themselves, Carol observed that she'd always been quite aware of the high level of education in Jamaica, and that it was apparent in the number of very competent readers from Jamaica in the book club. Like Derek and me, she added her voice to the chorus of readers in the room who found the treatment of Hortense appalling.

Javier said Hortense reminded him of his own cousin. When she moved to Canada with multiple degrees from schools in Jamaica, she couldn't get a job. “She was told she was overqualified,” said Javier. “I think eventually she just lost hope. Her spirit was really broken down.”

Derek asked the Jamaican guys in the book group if they or their families had experienced racism or rejection upon coming to Canada, even though Canadians prided themselves on their multicultural society. Javier, who immigrated when he was fourteen, said he thought that Canada was racist, but not like the “full-out racism” of America.

Albert, an American, confirmed that things were worse in the U.S., saying that when he was growing up in New York State and Oklahoma, “the only white people I seen in my neighbourhood were police and mailmen.” Canada, he said, “personally I don't see it that racist.”

Another Jamaican-born newcomer to the group with a slow, halting manner of speech said: “I experienced racism mostly with the cops, right? Every time I get in trouble they tell me their intention is to send me back, right? Because we're messing up the country, is how they put it, right?”