Bookin' in the Big House

What I Learned Leading a Women’s Prison Book Club

The best way for a self-proclaimed naïve, middle-class, law-abiding novice like Devoto to learn how to be a crook was to go to prison. While most of her teachers are now gone, in one way or another, Bookin’ in the Big House is Pat’s remembrance of them and of the place they lived.

Pat Cunningham Devoto had specific hopes for the women imprisoned at the Montgomery Women’s Facility who participated in her book club for the better part of seven years. She hoped the books they read would give some respite from their daily prison life and, at the same time, hoped the individual members might gain valuable knowledge that would have a positive impact on their future. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

Instead, Devoto learned how to “brew” a batch of beer—right under the guards’ noses; how to assume a stone-faced expression while a guard berated her because she brought books—to the book club; what it’s like to have a wedding, complete with trimmings, while imprisoned; how to anonymously pester the parole board from the prison phones; how to make hand sanitizer punch; and how to use PREA cards in the exact opposite way they are meant to be used. In other words, the best way for a self-proclaimed naïve, middle-class, law-abiding novice like Devoto to learn how to be a crook was to go to prison. But in the beginning, of course, she hadn’t a clue. While most of her teachers are now gone, in one way or another, Bookin’ in the Big House is Pat’s remembrance of them and of the place they lived.