Tracie Bernardi

As an artist myself I know experiences not only shape my creations but they are what provokes each piece.

I believe up until a single experience (or series of experiences) awakens our artistic abilities, many of us don’t have any clue that we possess a creative bone. For me it was going to prison at age nineteen that roused the writer in me, and later while still incarcerated, it was a seven-year stint in solitary confinement that gave me a love for drawing, collaging, origami, paper machete, and basically anything that produces physical art. I had something to say not just in protest but now I could express my deepest desires, what I could not have I could create. I once built an entire origami house based on the a few basic folds. I also drew to inspire change, I once drew a trash can filled with people to demonstrate the way as human-being’s inmates or people with criminal histories are considered throw away. Without my experience I could never have given birth to such ideas.

For others like Paul Lawrence Dunbar it was the experiences of his own and his people’s oppression and the racist injustices before and during his time that compelled him to create.

Being “rejected because of his race” at every place he sought hire, (p.2) Dunbar took a menial position as “an elevator operator, a job that allowed him time to continue writing.” (p.2) Time being the key word I think, for me it was. Time to not only experience my reality, I had time to explore the injustice and give voice to it through writing and art. Although my experience was harsh I had to go through it in order to write in the way he did. During one of his bouts of bad health he utilized his down time by publishing his first short story collection, where he “delineated the situation of blacks in both pre-and post-emancipation United States” (p.4) This took courage and intelligence but mostly it took experience.

Although Dunbar’s work was criticized, he was “one of the first influential black poets in American literature” he made his mark. His novels appear mostly fictional they depict very real ideas about black America. Ideas he might not have arrived at, had his history or experience been different. Dunbar was daring in his writing as he expressed views that others may have contemplated but never could or would dare to publicly. He challenged oppression up until he wrote his last novel, The Sport of the Gods, this story was about “Berry Hamilton” who was falsely accused of stealing from the white people he worked for. (p.5) Stories like this grew inside of Dunbar, some well received others “deemed unconvincing” (p.5) like The Love of Laundry, where a sick woman finds love or The Uncalled, that questioned the ministers in The Scarlets Letters intent. (p.4)

He ventured places that those who have not shared his experiences would be unable to go, and although he was critical of the abuses put upon his people, but again he fell prey to perpetuating the stereo-typical black image in with the story line of a female character is subjected to “exploitation” (P.5) at the hands of her own race. These struggles and experiences shape his work.

In his book, In Old Plantation Days, he “resorted to caricaturing his own race, portraying black slaves as faithful servants and obedient, slow-witted but good natured…” (p.6)

As for myself I understand this entirely, in many ways inmates have become my people/ my cause. When I experienced oppression for myself, it was then that I found my creative voice. Like Dunbar was a voice for his People and their struggles stirring up concern and awareness with his words; I try to be a voice for mine. I am trying to do my part in unveiling the abuse inmates face inside prison wall at the hands of their keepers. In doing this I feel I am also contributing to changing the way people view inmates, as well as generating actual recovery thus curbing the recidivism rate, just as Dunbar’s writing helped further the liberation of his people.

Cf12