Bonnie Foreshaw starts around the 20-minute mark ...
HIGHLIGHTS:
I took writing as a way to help deal w/ the reality of being incarcerated
Writing was therapeutic for me … it helped purge me of the secrets …
Our family & our culture was something that women didn’t talk about ...
Saturday & Sunday you’re running for your life or you’re getting battered
I left home to take a friend home and never got back for like 27 years …
It took me at least 5 years to come to terms with being incarcerated
While I was there I was sexually abused …
I knew I wasn’t getting a fair trial
... No one answers any of my questions …
My coming home was so surreal
[After 3 years as a hospice volunteer] I began to suffer from burnout
I was released without anything except a piece of paper
I went to DMV 6 times to get ID
The system isn’t set up for us to be successful …
It’s set up for us to fail
Inmates are the modern-day commodity
I feel for the ladies left behind…mold, mildew, the deterioration of the buildings…They are breathing mold…
It’s not a place where you rehabilitate unless you take it upon yourself
The Buddhist monks used to come – and DOC would lock us up…
They would do anything to keep the outside from coming in and seeing how we was actually living …
The mildew is so well known…[guards] don’t even want to work there …
I know in this world you can’t make it by yourself
Faith kept me going
I was surrounded by good women
Wally Lamb came in because…the suicide rate was high…
He helped the women to be more realistic…instead of taking that way out
On the accidental & fatal shooting of Joyce Amos:
It’s something I live with every day
It was harder for me to forgive myself than it was for me to ask for forgiveness
It’s just that recently, before I came home, that I gave myself permission to forgive myself for what I did because it wasn’t no intentions on my behalf … that’s what gives me the motivation to help others less fortunate than me …
Photos by
BOB THIESFIELD
at the Oliver Wolcott Library, Litchfield, CT
- Bonnie Foreshaw and LuVonney LaMar peruse the second collection of essays by prisoners at the Niantic jail -- "I'll Fly Away" -- which Lamar recorded as an audio book for blind.
- Librarian Heather Wilder at the video controls as more COOL JUSTICE author Andy Thibault opens the program.
- Screen shot of Bonnie's first day of freedom 11-15-13 as gathering listens to WCBS 880 news report.
- Bonnie takes the stage
- Bonnie talks about surviving prison life for more than 27 years, the suffering women she left behind, the remorse she feels every day for taking another person's life in an accidental shooting and the benefits of the Wally Lamb writing workshops in gaining self awareness and alleviating depression.
- more COOL JUSTICE: afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.
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