This Short Film was created and edited by Roberto Almaraz (He/Him), a second year American Studies major, with an interest in film. It was created in the Fall 2020 course AMS 311s “Prison Art, Lit, and Protest.” The short film is meant to juxtapose recently released perspectives of prison to the formerly released in order to contextualize life outside the system after recuperating and contrast the audience perspective with the experience of others. Special Thanks to the participants: Anna Perez & Xavier Perez" What follows is an introductory essay and the short film.

Interviewing relatives about their experience in prison was meant to shed light on the contemporary perspective of Texas prisons from released Latinx people. In formulating the questions I attempted to present materials that were related to prison literature pertaining to Chicano and prison liberation. I adhered to Texas After Violence’s series Documenting Narratives of Violence to minimize negative effects described by the Substance Abuse AndMental Health Services Administration definition of trauma: “...a set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”(Field) Where I avoid traumatic responses I attempt to maximize the interview’s outreach, and in turn the participants’ perspective and advocacy a for their concerns. Research has questioned the harm interviews impose on prisoners, questioning their awareness of the interview prior to its occurrence and subsequent harm that may come afterwards. A study titled “Inmate Perceptions of the Benefit and Harm of Prison Interviews” brings these questions into light and proposes that traumatic situations don’t affect the incarcerated post-interview “Respondents reported some intangible benefits and no harms or negative consequences. They also reported the interviews as being a positive and rewarding experience and uniformly said that they had not been subject to coercive persuasion.”(Copes, et al.) Hoping to find a happy medium amongst the two sources positive aspects, I attempted to keep questioning neutral, with most of the questions pertaining to their perspective rather than their individual experience.

Through my first question I hoped to draw attention to the perception of need of prisons by asking participants about their treatment, how they felt they were treated well, versus how they were treated poorly. “If prison, in its philosophical origin, was meant as a humane alternative to beatings or torture or death, it has transformed into a fixed feature of modern light, one that is not know, even by its supporters and administrators, for its humanity.”(Kushner) As Rachel Kushner sought to answer questions of perceptions of humanity in prison through her interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, I hoped a question about their perspective on the treatment of the incarcerated would shed insight into its “humanity” while juxtaposing their perspective to the audience. I was interested heavily on the perception of time in prison, aspects of how time was tracked, how it affected the psyche, and how one passed it. In reading Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing I became intrigued with notions of non-linear comprehensions of time. Abnormal comprehensions of time exist inside prison and affect, at the very least, how the incarcerated remember their loved one’s but can problematize their relationship with their kin as well. The question of how they kept passed time while incarcerated was vital to openly discussing this topic and how they managed time after their release. The question then led to how books helped with their sentence, if at all, as both participants utilized books as means of grounding. Recognized by the U.S. Supreme court as a privilege, literature is effectively used as a merit system for some prisoners “The majority opinion in Beard v. Banks constructs reading as a privilege that best serves the interests of the penal system when it is denied to uncooperative prisoners.”(Sweeney) In questions about time, their affinity for books came to surface and portrays reading as a virtue of prison culture that is effectively used against them with consequence of longer sentences and stripped privileges.

Further questions delve into the participants' perception of outside attitudes toward the recently released. I asked about their views on how society would treat them after serving their time to frame their answer within time, as they have led a life past prison to establish themselves since their release. This concern came from a Paper about perceptions of the formerly incarcerated by Suzanne Oboler and how they affect incarceration throughout communities “Latino and African American youth, increasingly rely and play on public anxieties about race and crime, hence reinforcing the public perception of an inherent connection between them.”(Oboler) Formulating this question in a broad manner to draw a personal response from the participants and bring perspective to the discussion surrounding perceptions of rehabilitation and crime.

Through these questions and participant answers’ I hope to strike an empathetic response to the experience of the individual prisoners to encourage a complex understanding of the formally incarcerated. By not subjecting the interviewees to complex questioning pertaining to specific articles and papers, I attempted to summarize article and reading concepts into the form of questions in order to gain a contemporary perspective into prison culture and life after. The answers given by participants should speak to their own perspectives, and I hope through this introduction to at least provide insight into what the intentions were behind the film.

Citations

Copes, Heith, et al. “Inmates’ Perceptions of the Benefits and Harm of Prison Interviews.”

Field Methods, vol. 25, no. 2, May 2013, pp. 182–196, doi:10.1177/1525822X12465798.

Field, J. (2019). DOCUMENTING NARRATIVES OF VIOLENCE: TRAUMA-INFORMED INTERVIEWING FOR GENERAL AUDIENCES . Texas After Violence.

Kushner, R. (2019, April 17). Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind .

Oboler, S. (2008). "Viviendo En El Olvido": Behind Bars, Latinos and Prison.

Sweeney, M. (2010). In Reading is my window: books and the art of reading in women's prisons. Introduction, University of North Carolina Press.

Ward, J. (2018). Sing, unburied, sing. Bloomsbury.