How Recreation Helps People Survive Prison (A perspective from the inside)
>“You ever play this before?” he asked, shuffling a deck of cards with professional hands. I shook my head. “Ya, it’s called Magic. I haven’t played in a while though, don’t really remember how to play.” I said. “Don’t worry about winning yet.” He replied. “First you have to learn the rules.” He dealt seven cards to himself. I did the same. The cards were bent at the corners, faded from years of use. Some had names of dragon, wizards, lands, and spells. I looked at them the way a child would look at treasure.
Hopefully this is the right place to share this piece with folks who might care about this kind of thing! I had the privilege of visiting MCI-Shirley and hearing this performed, and with the prison bureaucracy it took us 3 months to get a PDF of his final paper. He was stoked to have other people read his work, so I'm glad we were able to get it up on our site.
Gregory Coito was a Boston College Prison Education Program student enrolled in Jennifer Berkshire’s Journalism course at MCI-Shirley, a medium-security prison in central Massachusetts. This paper was presented as part of his final for the course and has been reproduced with the author’s permission.
https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/writing/how-recreation-helps-people-survive-prison/