True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall - Softcover

Salzman, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375727612 ISBN 13: 9780375727610

Publisher: Vintage, 2004

Synopsis

In 1997 Mark Salzman, bestselling author Iron and Silk and Lying Awake, paid a reluctant visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved and astonished him that he began to teach there regularly. In voices of indelible emotional presence, the boys write about what led them to crime and about the lives that stretch ahead of them behind bars. We see them coming to terms with their crime-ridden pasts and searching for a reason to believe in their future selves. Insightful, comic, honest and tragic, True Notebooks is an object lesson in the redemptive power of writing.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“True Notebooks succeeds in adding something fresh, galvanizing and articulate to the overcrowded realm of classroom stories. A candid, involving teacher’s diary . . . Eloquent . . . Cogent, thoughtful and honest.”
–Janet Maslin, The New York Times (September 15, 2003)

“Wonderful . . . Even the manipulative kids Salzman introduces are stunningly human . . . Examines a broken system with grace, wit, and gripping storytelling.”
–John Green, Booklist (August 2003, starred and boxed review)

“[Salzman’s] account’s power comes from keeping its focus squarely on these boys, their writing and their coming-to-terms with the mess their lives had become.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review (6/16/03)

“We get to see the kids he’s working with immediately, fairly, and without sentimentality . . .[Mark Salzman] steps aside and lets them speak.”
–Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx

“I devoured this book . . . Insightful and poignant and funny . . . It’s all soft underbelly in these pages, human beings at their best against great odds, searching for redemption.”
–Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking

“Strikingly candid . . . An unforgettable gallery of individuals whose efforts to articulate their condition and its causes are darkly illuminating–and heartbreaking.”
–Norman Rush, author of Mating and Mortals

About the Author:

Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, an account of his two years in China; Lost in Place, a memoir; and the novels The Laughing Sutra, The Soloist, and Lying Awake. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the filmmaker Jessica Yu, and their daughter, Ava.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375727612
• ISBN 13: 9780375727610
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352