1001 Books for Every Mood - Readers Guide

True Notebooks by Mark Salzman

This is a teacher’s diaries. The teacher is a writer, his students are juvenile felons incarcerated at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. Included are remarkable examples of students’ writing as these young men come to terms with their crimes and face a grim future. No clichés here, and True Notebooks is filled with unexpected moments, as when Salzman’s cello-playing moves his prison audience to tears.

-1001 Books for Every Mood

Readers Guide by Roberta Isleib

Overview

In 1997, writer Mark Salzman agreed to make a guest appearance at a writing class for violent teenage offenders held in Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. Moved by that experience, he allowed a Catholic nun to talk him into launching his own class. In spite of his disaffection for creative writing workshops and his concerns about not being able to relate to or handle the prisoners, he earned the respect of both students and staff and grew deeply involved in their attempts to put words to their experiences. True Notebooks gives his view of life inside the detention center and into the psyches of the young men who reside there. Salzman chronicles his time at the prison both with own observations and through his class's essays. Many of the young men expressed feelings and hopes through writing that their prison and former street gang lives would never have allowed. True Notebooks may both open your eyes and break your heart.

Discussion Questions

1. Salzman begins the book describing his inner conflict between the safety of staying home versus the potential rewards of getting involved with the prisoners. Discuss his list of reasons to visit/not visit the prison and how you might have reacted to the request.

2. The boys' writing often juxtaposes their involvement with violent crime against their yearning for their mothers. How do you understand this?

3. Writers' classes in the outside world often focus on the goal of publication. What did Salzman hope would come out of the writing sessions, both for himself and his students?

4. What do you think about the importance of the concepts of respect and disrespect in the lives of the prisoners?

5. What did Salzman take away from his own writing during his time in the prison?

6. Writer Wally Lamb taught similar classes in a women's prison in Connecticut and then published the essays, resulting in a furor about prisoners benefiting from their crimes. What are your thoughts about prisoners benefiting emotionally or financially from programs such as this one?

7.One of the boys writes (p.255): "There's no North star for me. Nothin' in my life ever stayed the same." What kinds of "North stars" can make the difference in people's lives? What about yours?

8. Discuss your reactions to learning the histories of these young men, most of them charged with murder. Did the historical information change your view of their actions?

9. A fellow writer asked Salzman if he worried about making the prisoners' lives harder by encouraging them to be vulnerable at a time when many will be entering a more brutal environment. What do you think?

About the Author

Born in Greenwich, CT in 1959, Salzman is the author of this and five other books: Pulitzer Prize finalist Iron and Silk (1987), The Laughing Sutra (1991), Lost in Place (1995), The Soloist (1994), and Lying Awake (2000). A proficient cello player, he was accepted to Yale at age 16 where he studied Chinese language and philosophy. Two years teaching English and studying martial arts led to his first book, a memoir about living in China.

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Roberta Isleib

Clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib's advice column mystery series, including Deadly Advice and Asking for Murder, stars a Connecticut psychologist and advice columnist. She says the work of the detective in a mystery has quite a bit in common with long-term psychotherapy: Start with a problem, follow the threads looking for clues, and gradually fill in the big picture. Roberta is the president of National Sisters in Crime. Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. http://www.robertaisleib.com