Almost every man at the prison, which is located about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, has been sentenced to a minimum of 20 years; some have been sentenced to life without parole. And because of Illinois truth-in-sentencing laws, many of those serving time for murder expect to remain behind bars for their entire sentence, with no time off for good behavior. It is a place that is ripe for desperation and despair. Yet, in a battered classroom on prison grounds, a serious college-level discussion is taking place. Under exposed fluorescent lights, behind a barred door, fighting to be heard over a noisy fan, liberal arts professor Christina Gómez, of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, calls on Ruben Hernandez, who is serving a 60-year sentence. He is eager to read his homework essay: “How does language influence my identity? When I speak, people find out that I’m not that uneducated Mexican. Yes, I’m from Durango and also from Chicago. Mi gente … we are all one people, Homo sapiens, and we all bleed the same.”
Gómez mildly criticizes him for “code-switching” in the Spanish phrase mi gente (my people), and thus using an idiom only some of his audience would fully comprehend. Mi gente is well understood here, he argues. “People know what it means in here and you should make word choices to grab your audience,” he says, arching his eyebrows at his fellow students, emphasizing a concept Gómez has taught. There are 15 other men in the class, most with black or brown faces, and many of them smile knowingly. They are halfway through their 14-week class in Latino history and culture and they know audience-grabbing when they hear it.After Ruben speaks, Gómez moves into a discussion of a reading from a book she co-edited, Mi Voz, Mi Vida (My Voice, My Life): Latino College Students Tell Their Life Stories, which is a collection of essays written by Dartmouth College students. Many in the class identify with the student narrator Eric, who struggles with his beliefs after his mother dies while he is attending college. “How do we decide what we value in life?” Gómez asks the class. It’s a classic humanities question, incredibly broad, hard to answer, and yet very, very important.
Unlike many college students, who are sometimes unwilling to risk embarrassing themselves in front of their peers, the men in the class at Stateville are eager to share their views and what they have learned from the readings. Ruben and the other students discuss whether they are free to live as they choose or if their lives are determined by their place in “the system.” Ruben is convinced that his current troubles stem entirely from wanting more than he really needs. “My needs are simple now, but there is no doubt in my mind that if I wasn’t arrested for murder, I would have been murdered myself.” Carlos Priester, who has been in prison for 17 years and has 23 more to serve, has a more hopeful attitude: “You want to be able to supply your family’s needs, and I won’t let being a convicted felon stand in my way. I know people who are convicted felons and they own property.”