The Junk Yard: Voices from an Irish Prison edited and introduced by Marsha Hunt Mainstream 176pp, £5.99 in UK
This could have been a dreadful book. Born of a writing workshop in Mountjoy prison, it promised a litany of repetitive, self-pitying and badly-written accounts of neglected childhoods and deprived youths, leading inexorably to lives of drug addiction and crime. The fact that it is nothing of the sort must be credited to Marsha Hunt, who, as writer-in-residence in Mountjoy, initiated this project and brought it to fruition. Some indication of the enormity of her task is given by the remark in her introduction that two of the 10 people in one group had no reading or writing skills at all when she began.
There were 23 men and three women in the three groups she worked with, and this book is the product of a 10-week course based on her conviction that "anybody can write if they have something personal to write about." So this is essentially a collection of snapshots of various phases in the lives of these prisoners, all in prison because of drug-related crime. The public perception of drug-abusing prisoners is of an undifferentiated mass of human flotsam, reduced to a level below humanity by their addiction. Marsha Hunt's book issues the strongest challenge yet to this perception, and deserves to be read by all those concerned with what is happening in our cities.
She has ordered their prisoners' writing under headings: Childhood, Family Life, The Score, Criminal Life, Prison Life. Although the same authors do not, on the whole, recur throughout the book (there are one or two exceptions) the picture created is a cohesive one of the life of a generation in Dublin's inner city communities. It gives the rawest insight into this life published so far - the lack of opportunity, the aimlessness, but also the great human variety, the humour and the courage of the people who end up in "the Joy".
These snapshots do not paint a picture of unmitigated misery. The pictures of childhood and family life are, on the whole, affectionate. Some are very moving, and negate the popular tabloid image of drug addicts so immune to human feeling that they have no affection for anyone, including their families. Many of these young prisoners are themselves the children of drug addicts. The first piece in the collection, from "Demo", is dedicated to "my grandparents - who I've always called Ma and Da - all my love for a great childhood". However, Demo's one-page story is about his mother, "who is the best mother anyone could have!"
In that one page, told mainly through direct speech, he recalls her leaving the house one evening when he was three or four, his running after her and her giving him a pound to spend on sweets to share with his friends. "As she bent down to do one of my laces, I noticed little tears in her eyes. `What's wrong, Ma?' I asked in my little boy voice'. " `Nothing, son. It's just the wind, son'." As they parted she hugged him and told him to be careful crossing the road. "And she had those tears again as she went away. I never saw her until years later. I was about nine years old."
This is typical of the terse, immediate, yet very affecting style Hunt has drawn out of her students, who often write of past events in the present tense, making them more immediate. "Kenno's" story begins: "The saddest point in my life was when my mother and father died: I was 16 when my mother died and was serving an eight-year sentence which made it a lot worse because I was locked up when given the bad news." She had been an addict, as had his father. Both died in their 30s of Aids-related illnesses. " . . . now so many people that were close to me have died, nothing shocks or sets me up any more. I've seen almost everything there is to see. And have felt almost everything there is to feel."
The descriptions of obtaining, preparing and shooting the drugs are graphic: trying to keep withdrawal at bay with Valium while waiting for the next fix, gathering in the known trading spots, recognising fellow-addicts by their appearance - "Dejection. White faces. Bitter-looking. Skinny." - jostling, bargaining, then finding somewhere to take the drugs. "I try to get a hit in my hand. I have to stick the needle in about 10 times and probe around for a vein. I'm panicking.
"Then I see the crimson-red blood mixing with the brown water. My fear leaves me. I ram the gear in and feel a sting from the citric acid.
"And then yes. I'm safe, till my next turnon," writes Fiddler.
But drug-taking is not glamorised. "I fucking hate being like this, but at this stage, after 14 years of using, it's a matter of being sick or going without drugs. So, I don't give a bollox, I just want gear. It's not a matter of life or death. It's more important," says another of the writers in the book.
The Junk Yard is not without hope. One of Marsha's groups was in the separation unit, trying to get off drugs. Some of the most insightful writing comes from this group. One writes "I won't be back because I have a life; a child, a wife, hopes, dreams. All that shit. But mostly the motivation to alter my perceptions. And as long as I hold on to that key, I can escape my own prison."