CHICAGO –
For college senior Nana Ampofo, an unconventional book club inside one of the largest prisons in the United States has transformed her career ambitions.
Every week, the 22-year-old drives a van with her DePaul University classmates to the Cook County Jail to talk about books with inmates and, recently, with well-known activist Sister Helen Prejean. Ampofo comes prepared with thought-provoking questions to start conversations in the Chicago jail about the most recent books you’ve been reading together.
One club rule is clear: Discussions about personal lives are encouraged, but questions about why other members are in prison are not allowed.
“That’s part of dehumanizing people. You want people to tell you their own story and have their own autonomy,” Ampofo said. “When you go in with an open mind, you see how similar people are to you.”
The student-led volunteer effort began years ago as an offshoot of a DePaul program that offered college-credit classes at the jail on the city’s southwest side for students and detainees. The book club, with a new cohort each academic quarter, tackles books that resonate personally with the group’s members, who are almost all black or Latino.
Associated Press journalists were allowed into the jail Monday to observe the current club’s final meeting to discuss Prejean’s book “Dead Man Walking,” where the Louisiana anti-death penalty activist made a special appearance. The book, which was also adapted to film and opera, is about her experiences as a spiritual advisor to a pair of men sentenced to death in the 1980s.
Sitting in a circle inside a window-filled jail chapel, 10 inmates in jail-issued tan uniforms sat between four college students and Prejean, who visits Catholic University in Chicago each year.
Ampofo, who advocated for Prejean’s visit, cried when she spoke about how important the group members and their discussions are to her. Laughter erupted when Prejean told a vulgar joke involving popular characters from the Louisiana swamps. And there were loud nods when Steven Hayer, a detainee, explained why many inmates return to jail.
“Our society does not invest in solutions,” he said. “And when they get out, they’ll go back to what they know.”
Book club members took the opportunity to ask Prejean questions, including the differences between the book and the movie and what it’s like to watch people die.
The 85-year-old nun has been present at seven executions. Her archival papers are housed at DePaul, including script notes for the 1995 film starring Susan Sarandon.
After witnessing his first execution, Prejean said he vomited, but decided that being with people in their final moments was a privilege.
“When you have witnessed something, then that fire starts to burn in your heart asking for justice, we have to change this,” he said.
As a white woman who grew up in the South, Prejean said her work in prison opened her eyes to racism.
Most of the book club’s detained members are black, reflecting the demographics of the jail, which houses nearly 5,000 detainees. About 70 percent of inmates participate in some type of educational programming such as book club, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
But the participation of college students sets the book club apart from other activities.
“When you suddenly have outside students sitting next to you, you start to think of yourself differently,” Dart said. “It changes mentalities.”
Detainees are invited to participate according to their interests, he said. Their internal behavior determines their ability to join, not why they are serving time, he added. Health issues are also taken into account.
The prison waiting list to enter the club has been up to 40 people.
Jarvis Wright, who has been detained in Cook County for two years, said he is a reader but had never been in a book club before. This 30-year-old man reads at night, when silence reigns in prison. The other book club selections included “The Color of Law,” which delves into housing segregation.
“Even though we are here incarcerated serving time, awaiting trial of our cases, this gives us something positive to look forward to,” Wright said. “We’re not here just wasting time.”
DePaul has offered college classes through a national program called Inside-Out Prison Exchange since 2012. Classes are held at both the Cook County Jail and the Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security men’s prison a about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Chicago.
During book club, there are security guards present, but no one is chained.
Helen Damon-Moore, who oversees DePaul’s prison education programs, says there has never been a security problem.
“Everyone’s the same when they’re inside,” Damon-Moore said.
Stanley Allen, a 36-year-old detainee, said he was attracted to the club because it was linked to a university. He hopes to take classes for credit in the future. For him, the most surprising thing about the club was meeting the university students and Prejean.
“There are really good people out there,” he said.
Other book club members say the experience has brought them closer.
“I feel like I’m talking to a group of my brothers,” Seven Clark, a DePaul sophomore from Chicago, told the group. “His way of speaking is very familiar to me. I feel at home.”
Ampofo will return to prison later this week, when she starts a new club focused on writing by black women. It’s a theme that resonates with her as the American-born daughter of an immigrant mother from Ghana.
Ampofo, the first to graduate from high school in her family, is planning to go to graduate school to continue her studies in museums. She dreams of improving access to museums for incarcerated people and their families.
“I want to take care of people,” he said. “And I found the people I want to take care of.”