Mikita Brottman

Don't be fooled by the title. Mikita Brottman loves to read.It's merely a ploy to draw the reader in.(Worked on me). What she actually argues against is literary snobbery. She takes offence to those who proclaim that the "Literary Classics' are the only worthwhile way to examine the depths of the human psyche. Brottman discusses a number of genres which she personally feels have given her more insight into the human mind. Some of her favorites are modern bestsellers, tell all bios, true crime books, and psychoanalyst case studies. She makes strong and compelling arguments for all these genres, and I'll probably find myself dipping into some of them.… (meer)

The title of this book definitely peaked my interests; prisons and books. Also, the cover is fabulous! The book is a memoir of the author’s experience facilitating a book club inside a male prison and the lives of the inmates participating. It’s just an okay book and only slightly interesting. I’m not familiar with the books they read and it didn’t seem to be a hindrance. I think the author learned very quickly that facilitating a college-level book club with people who have spent most of their lives incarcerated is vastly different from teaching college students. There is a whole culture inside a prison that the author definitely got schooled on during book club. It also seemed the author had unrealistic expectations of the inmates; therefore, she had difficulty meeting them where they were at regarding their book interests. She saw the inmates the way she wanted to see them and tried to make them fit into the characters of the story she made up. She also frequently contradicted herself by being annoyed when the inmates related the books to their own experiences by being tangential and discussing current prison life, while a few pages later probing them to talk about how they related to the story. On a different note, the author’s boundaries with the inmates is concerning. Especially some of the reading material she selected and the movies she brought in for them to view. She also repeatedly makes disrespectful comments about the correctional staff and engages in those splitting conversations with the inmates. She appears quite naïve to the potential dangers she exposes herself. I appreciate the service she provides and know that it can be done in a professional manner in which she can gain respect from both correctional staff and inmates. I also do not underestimate she has had some unpleasant experiences with correctional staff; however, I don’t think it serves her overall purpose to have those experiences published in this book.… (meer)