LOWELL, Mass. — The reading assignment was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and around the oval table, strong opinions were flying.
"You want me to toss it out the window now?" asked 21-year-old Tina Berry, convicted on marijuana charges. "I hated it. I hated it. It was very complicated for me."
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Friday January 12, 2001 Home Edition Part A Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 32 words Type of Material: Correction
Literature program--A story in Thursday's Times about a literature program for criminal offenders incorrectly identified the position of Judge Joseph Dever. He is presiding justice of the state District Court in Lynn, Mass.
Tracy Merritt, whose alcohol-related offenses include malicious destruction of property, assault and she has forgotten what else, aimed her gaze at professor Jean Trounstine.
The print was too small, the 37-year-old Merritt said, and there were too many words on the page. "But I think I've met people like that nasty neighbor--where you kick the soccer ball into his yard and you're afraid to go get it."
Probation Officers Also Participate
When Merritt's probation officer, Bobby Hassert, dismissed the novel as an out-of-date fantasy, U.S. District Judge Joseph Dever jumped in to counter that the book was a timeless classic.
"Take him down, judge!" Merritt interjected.
For a handful of Massachusetts women, this ongoing seminar in modern American literature is an alternative to incarceration. With rigid rules to offset the relaxed atmosphere, the biweekly class turns courtroom antagonists into intellectual peers.
Rather than merely sentencing criminal offenders to read and discuss books by contemporary American authors, Dever and other Massachusetts judges complete the assignments too, and join in the conversation. Probation officers who monitor the women's cases also take part in the classes.
The Changing Lives Through Literature seminar at Middlesex Community College here is voluntary. Still, some women opt out, saying they would rather do time in county jail or state prison than read Joyce Carol Oates or Toni Morrison. Their skepticism is shared by some critics, who blast this approach as soft and an invitation to manipulate the system.
But Trounstine, who for several years led inmates at a nearby women's prison in productions of Shakespeare, believes that, in some cases, books may be more effective than bars. Reading, said Trounstine, is redemptive.
"There is something transformative about the power of the imagination to take on a character," she said. "It's hard to measure, it's hard to really discuss, it's not magical--but there's something experiential that happens to a person in reading a book and then in talking about that book."
