Nearly every year since 2014, organizers of the Pathfinder and POPS (Pain of the Prison System) clubs – for teens affected by incarceration, detention or organizers – publish an anthology featuring students’ creative works expressing their feelings, challenges or personal triumphs.
This year’s publication – titled “Home and Away” – presents an array of poems, short essays and other written vignettes describing the students’ complex emotions and unique experiences. The book also features student artwork and photos offering visual representations of their lives.
The content is as diverse as the students, ranging from odes to the club and “my favorite person,” to expressing personal difficulties, growing up in chaotic households and challenging relationships with parents and others.
One anonymous contribution – “Constructing a Good Daughter” – shared powerful sentiments with a handful of words:
“One day it got so bad that me and my mom’s silence was louder than our screams. It got comfortable, but I can’t rummage forever. I can’t construct a good daughter out of a bad mother.”
Senior Vida Mueller – one of more than 90 students featured in “Home and Away” – contributed several written works and drawings, including “My Favorite Gift.” The poem closes by noting: “Simple things tend to be the most meaningful to me, since they hold the most memories.”
“The Haunted House” by Genalyn Guerreo is a letter to her brother, apologizing on behalf of “the one who will never say sorry,” adding, “Don’t be afraid to cry, and don’t be afraid to turn to me if you ever want to talk about that old haunted house or the ghost who used to haunt it.”
Amy Friedman, an author and criminal justice advocate who co-founded POPS the Club with her husband Dennis Danziger at Venice High School in 2013, said the clubs encourage students to express themselves in creative ways to help them “transform hurt and harm to hope and healing.”
Published by Out of the Woods Press, “Home and Away” is available for purchase online at www.amazon.com/dp/1952197163.