A Conversation with Christina McDowell

My dear friend and colleague, Amy Friedman, is largely the reason that I found my way to becoming a teacher of writing. Years ago Amy encouraged me to send her an idea for a course, which I did, and before I knew it I was on the slate to teach at UCLA Extension Writers' Program. This opportunity changed my life.

Amy continues to change lives, now as Executive Director of a non-profit organization she founded called POPS, which stands for Pain of the Prison System. POPS supports teenagers who have been impacted as a result of having a loved one in prison. A shocking 1 in 15 children in the United States has a parent who is or has been incarcerated! The first POPS club was launched at Venice High School and they have since expanded to 8 clubs in Los Angeles and reached 5 states. These high-school clubs meet weekly and foster healing and connection through creative expression and emotional support.

One of the things I love most about POPS is that they encourage the students to break their silence and share their stories, moving through and hopefully beyond the shame, stigma and sorrow. Each year the organization publishes the students' work in an anthology -- see 2016's Before There Were Bars and 2017's Cracked Masks.

The vision for POPS is to have a club in every high school in the nation. In order to get there, they need our support! And so I am extending an invitation for all of you to join me on Friday, November 2nd in attending the POPS gala, a Casino Masquerade at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The evening features honoree, Christina McDowell, who authored the memoir After Perfect, about the impact of her father's incarceration, and is the co-producer of the 2018 documentary "Survivor's Guide to Prison."

Scroll down to read more about the POPS gala as well as my conversation with Christina McDowell about her memoir and connection to this incredible organization.

I hope to see you there!

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Christina McDowell is the author of the critically acclaimed book, After Perfect: A Daughter's Memoir. She has written for LA Weekly, Marie Claire, Porter Magazine, The Daily Banter, USA Today, The Detroit Free Press and more. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, O (Oprah) Magazine, People Magazine, The Village Voice, among others.

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Christina is an advocate for restorative justice and criminal justice reform. She has traveled to state prisons to speak on behalf of families of the incarcerated and victims of crime. She is currently a student at Georgetown University and writing her second book.

Growing up in an affluent Washington, DC, suburb, Christina and her sisters were surrounded by the elite until their life of luxury was brutally stripped away after the FBI arrested her father on fraud charges. When he took a plea deal as he faced the notorious Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort’s testifying against him, the cars, homes, jewelry, clothes, and friends that defined the family disappeared before their eyes, including the one thing they could never get back: each other.

Christina writes with candid clarity about the dark years that followed and the devastation her father’s crimes wrought upon her family. A rare, insider’s perspective on the collateral damage of a fall from grace, After Perfect is a poignant reflection on the astounding pace at which a life can change and how blind we can be to the ugly truth.

Karin Gutman: How did you first get connected with POPS? 
 
Christina McDowell: Through a friend I met in a twelve-step program. I have been sober and in recovery for 6 years. She introduced me to author, Amy Friedman, the club’s founder. When I met with Amy I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of POPS, that she understood firsthand what so many children with incarcerated parents feel.
 
KG: How would you describe POPS to someone who is just learning about it for the first time?
 
CM: POPS stands for pain of the prison system. It is the first high school club in America that addresses the pain and isolation this population of students so often feels. Once a week, POPS students meet, write, talk, draw, and express themselves through the arts, healing from the pain of the prison system. It is a reminder that no one has to walk through this experience alone.
 
KG: How is your story the same or different from the kids who participate in POPS clubs around the country, especially given that so many of them come from less privileged backgrounds?
 
CM: When I was eighteen years old the FBI arrested my father on fraud charges then later I discovered he had taken my social security number, laundered money in my name and left me with 100k of credit card debt. I grew up in an extraordinarily white and privileged community in Washington, D.C. I never knew anyone in prison except for the characters I saw on television or in movies. Going to prison for the first time profoundly changed my perception of the world we live in, the way our media and Hollywood portrays prison and those inside prison. It opened my eyes at a young age to the injustices and systemic racism so many in our country are still facing. For example, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate 5 times higher than whites. 

Given my background, the access I had to resources during my father’s incarceration was far greater than many of the children who are suffering today, and it is always important to me that I acknowledge that difference in the context of speaking about this issue. But there are also many ways in which I am exactly the same as a POPS kid. My father was sentenced to 57 months in prison. He missed birthdays, graduations, Christmases, father's days, all of the anniversaries and holidays that make losing a parent to the system so incredibly painful. That feeling of not knowing when I would ever see him again, or when he would come home. Children of the incarcerated have no rights so the government doesn't owe them an explanation of where their parent is being held or taken to. Children just wait for a hand-written letter to come in the mail if they're lucky.  My father was gone for about 4 years. And many people assume that he was in some kind of fancy white collar prison. Most "camps" no longer exist. My father was in a federal minimum security prison for the majority of his time in El Paso, Texas, right on the border of Juarez, Mexico.

When my father came home I really wished that things in my family could have gone back to the way they were, but sadly, his imprisonment ripped our family apart. My parents divorced and my sisters and I each dealt with our feelings and what we were going through very differently. He came home around my 24th birthday. And then he was re-arrested and incarcerated a few years later, and spent another 9 months behind bars for breaking probation. Prison did not rehabilitate him. In my opinion, it just exacerbated problems that were already there. His second arrest was what solidified my need to separate myself from him, which I go into great length about why I made that decision in my memoir. 
 
KG: What kind of support did YOU have when your life turned upside down?
 
CM: This is a tricky question. So many of us that have experienced this kind of pain of the prison system want to keep this pain a secret. So for a long time, I did, and I never sought help. Of course, I had my few friends at the time who knew what was going on and I would share certain things, but I never shared the extent to which I was suffering inside. It was very hard to process as I was experiencing it. The trauma of a parent’s arrest, trial, imprisonment—abandonment, is very layered and complicated. Studies are finally being done at the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Rutgers University, to explain this kind of complex trauma— the kinds of resources this population needs in order to heal, and is why POPS the Club is so important.
 
KG: How did you know you needed to share this story in a public way? And that you were ready to take that on?
 
CM: It happened unexpectedly. When Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s film, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” was released, it enraged me that they would glorify this kind of behavior and life-style while not acknowledging the victims (including the silent victims, which are the children of those committing the crimes). My father was an associate of Jordan Belfort’s (the self-described “Wolf of Wall Street”) and I had an opportunity to stand up for those who were not only affected by greed in this country, but also the hurt of the families of those who committed the crime. I had an opportunity in the moment to go public with the story and I took it. I was just so done with Hollywood’s false narratives in these kinds of films. Thousands of people reached out to me after the article went viral, who share my story or a similar one. It was an incredible gift of connection, and not feeling alone.

KG: How did you navigate writing about and exposing your family? Did your relationship with them, namely your father, change as a result of sharing your story?
 
CM: My mother and two sisters have been incredibly supportive, and I don’t take that for granted. Unfortunately I do not have a relationship with my father today. It’s a question I am asked a lot. It’s possible to forgive someone without being in contact with them; but if that person who hurt you is unwilling to be accountable for their actions, as is the case with my father, then you will continue to re-victimize yourself if you remain in contact with them. This was a hard lesson I had to learn, but an important one. I allowed myself, with the support of a therapist and twelve-step group, to move through that pain and grief.
 
KG: Did you find the writing process empowering and transformative?
 
CM: Absolutely. Writing for me has always been like magic. Sometimes you can’t see the message until it is all out of you, our subconscious is always at work. Writing truly saved my life. Without a pen and my journals, I wouldn’t have gotten through some of my toughest, darkest days. The page always listens. And there is something to be said about our health when we release the thoughts, fears, resentments onto the page. I believe studies have been done to show that writing improves mental and physical health; it certainly does for me.
 
KG: What was your writing process like? Was it easy to find the structure? What was the most challenging part for you? Did you (do you) have a writing ritual? 
 
CM: The back and forth structure of present to past came naturally to me. I write usually how I see and/or experience things since I’m visual. The most challenging aspect was re-living the past and having to remember that it wasn’t my present reality. I remember showing up at a friend’s house in tears because of a scene I had just written and I felt trapped inside of it. It was a very emotional process but I had no choice but to move through it in order to get to the other side. As far as rituals, I think it’s just about letting go of my perfectionism on a daily basis so I can begin writing. Getting seated and going has always been the hardest part because of fear, which, I once heard stands for “false evidence appearing real.”
 
KG: How did you land a publishing deal?
 
CM: I was very lucky in that a few publishers read the article I wrote for the LA Weekly criticizing the “The Wolf of Wall Street,” so I had the opportunity to meet with them and send them my proposal. That said, I was prepared because I had spent years quietly writing and re-writing, so I’m a big believer in that saying, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
 
KG: I have noticed in readers’ reviews that many relate to your character’s journey, that it’s not a “poor little rich girl” story. That is a remarkable achievement. Is this something you consciously worked at? How did you approach the writing process so that your journey would be relatable?
 
CM: Thank you. I definitely credit my editor, Allison Callahan, at Gallery Books for helping me dig deeper. She challenged me in places where I needed to be more accountable for the mistakes I made in my life. But I was also in a place where I was ready to hear it, to go from being a victim to being a survivor, and that meant owning up to my part in every relationship in my life and then translating that to the page. I think we can all relate as human beings to feeling like we have somehow failed in some way, or perhaps we struggle with identity, or reminding ourselves that our bank accounts aren’t a reflection of our self-worth, or coping with the loss of a parent to alcoholism, or to prison. I always knew this story was about so much more than the loss of money, but about the loss of family, American values, love and accountability. I always say that we are powerless over the cards we are dealt, but it’s up to us and only us what we do with them.
 
KG: Will you be attending the POPS gala on November 2nd? Can you tell us about it?
 
Yes! I am very humbled to be this year’s honoree along with the class of 2019. We are having a Casino Masquerade at the Los Angeles Athletic Club downtown to raise money for our ever-expanding programs. There will be games, jazz, dancing and cocktails. I am so excited to dance the night away celebrating such an important, and life-changing organization. I hope you will join us! All are welcome!
 
KG: Yes, I will be there!

Why should someone who has no connection to the prison system come out and support POPS?
 
Studies now show that nearly half of all U.S. children have been impacted by incarceration. That is an overwhelming number of youth in the wealthiest country in the world to be suffering—youth that are at high risk for homelessness, hunger, and complete isolation. Just think about the long-term ramifications of this. No child in this world should ever feel alone, or should ever be homeless on the street. We can always do more to fight to keep our communities together.
 
KG: From a creative and artistic standpoint, I am curious if you think that this story is the hardest one you’ll ever tell? Has your creativity opened up in the aftermath of getting this origin story out?
 
CM: Oh absolutely. I do think in many ways it was the hardest story I will ever tell. Initially, of course, because I had never written a book before and I was learning as I went. It took years to form the story, a lot of trial and error, failing and starting over. And also just because of how emotionally painful it was to re-live each experience on the page. I certainly wouldn’t be writing fiction today without having told this story first. I always used to tell my friends and family while I was writing it that I just have to get it out so that what’s left inside of me can find its place to live.

I'm currently writing my first novel, which has been an entirely different experience. Of course, it is heavily influenced by my childhood. It takes place in Washington, D.C. and is about the murder of a wealthy family.  It's an exploration of classism in America, old money versus new money, the disintegration of values—if they were ever really there to begin with—power and white fragility. Clearly I'm drawn to comedy! But in all seriousness, I am having way more fun writing this one than the last.

You are cordially invited to

POPS Casino Masquerade

Friday, November 2nd

8:00 pm - 1:00 am

Los Angeles Athletic Club
431 W. 7th Street

Your presence is requested for a night of cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, live music, and casino games benefitting POPS the Club.

The 5th POPS annual gala promises to be a chic night out. Treat yourself to a night of old-fashioned Hollywood glamour and mingle with its brilliant honoree, Christina McDowell, author of the memoir After Perfect, and co-producer of the acclaimed documentary, "Survivors Guide to Prison.”

Glam it up, put on a mask, and party for a cause!

The gala benefits POPS, which stands for Pain of the Prison System. POPS supports the long-overlooked community of teenagers who have been impacted by our prison system as a result of having a loved one in prison. 

1 in 15 children in the United States has a parent who is are has been incarcerated. These young people have been traumatized by stigma and shame. Most people are unaware of this fact because these youth have long been silent.

POPS is working to amplify their voices, through weekly work in the high school clubs and through published book collections of their writings and artwork.

Learn more about POPS the Club

To learn more about Christina McDowell, visit her website

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A Conversation with Lisa Manterfield

I had the lovely opportunity to chat with Lisa Manterfield this week, author of the memoir I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home, about her journey through infertility. She is a big proponent of self-publishing and offers some helpful insights that may shorten the learning curve if you're considering going that route. She is also doing a unique experiment with her fiction (a serial novel!) so read on below to find out more.

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LISA MANTERIELD is the creator of an online forum LifeWithoutBaby.com that gives a voice to women without children. Her writing has been featured in Los Angeles Times, Bicycle Times, and Romantic Homes. In her gritty, award-winning memoir, I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood, Lisa traces her spiraling route from rational 21st century woman to desperate mama-wannabe.

She examines the siren song of motherhood, the insidious lure of the fertility industry, and the repercussions of being childless in a mom-centric society. But this isn't just another infertility story with another miracle baby ending, nor is it a sad introspective of a childless woman; this is a story about love, desire, and choices and ultimately about hope. It is the story of a woman who escapes her addiction, not with a baby, but with her sanity, her marriage, and her sense-of-self intact. I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home is a 2012 Independent Publishers Book Awards winner.

Lisa lives with her husband and cat, and divides her time between Los Angeles and Santa Rosa, California.

Karin: Where did your memoir begin?

Lisa: I had signed up for The Writer's Studio at UCLA with Barbara Abercrombie, and her husband was sick suddenly. This was a few years ago. And Amy Friedman was the replacement teacher. I just connected with her immediately. She did this exercise in class where she had us go home and write on a piece of paper, “What is the one thing that you don't want to write about?” So I went home and thought about it, and I said, “I don't want to write about infertility. I don't want to write about this... I'm living it. Not interested in writing about it.” I went in the next day to see what she was going to do with it and she didn't do anything with it. She never mentioned it again.

So that topic sort of wormed its way into my mind until I ended up writing about it. I always sort of laughed that that was one of her devious moves to get us to write about things that we “thought” we didn't want to write about, the hard stuff.

I really started writing about it as a way to deal with what I was going through. And then I kept writing and kept writing, and finally I thought, you know, there's nothing out there on this topic. There were very few books out there, but they were a lot of “how to” books or “miracle baby” endings. So I started writing more and more about it, and I realized that I had a book. I put together these funny essays and had some people read them; and I just realized I was just skimming the surface of my own story.

So I took a step back and started from the beginning again, thinking, “What's the story that I want to tell?” And I still wasn't sure what the ending was going to be, so it's kind of interesting that the process of writing the story helped me to understand what my own ending needed to be. Not just the book, but the ending for my own story.

For you, what does it mean to realize that you 'have a book'?

Some people go through a life experience and go, “I want to write about this, I want to share this story” and that wasn't the way it happened for me. I have always wanted to write fiction and have been working towards how to write fiction; and at the same time writing personal essays, which is what I did at Spark, writing short narrative nonfiction. So I never really set out to write a memoir, but was gathering this material and realizing that I was probably looking for a book myself that didn't exist. There really were not resources out there. I wasn't hearing this story... “What happens when it doesn't work out for you?” Does that happen to anybody? I just felt that somebody needed to talk about it. For me, it needed to be written, and I'm really glad that I did.

Did you publish traditionally or independently?

I did it independently. I did pitch it traditionally, and that topic - even now - is pretty taboo. There are very few traditionally published books around that topic. But I knew I just needed to get it out there; so yeah, I did publish it independently. And ultimately, I think that was the best move for it.

Why?

Because it is a niche audience. I think it's a much bigger audience than people realize, but it is very niche. Part of publishing the book was starting a blog, which has actually really grown into this pretty active online community. So that's something that came out of the publishing process. That in turn led to the follow-on book which is more of a “how to” book. Sometimes you make plans of which direction your career or life is going to go, and then things just kind of evolve.

But I like the self-publishing process. I like having that control. It's a lot of work, but you have a lot of control over it. It's a lot of work, but it's kind of fun to know that you've basically produced the whole product, not just the writing aspect of it, but the whole package.

I think so much is changing in the traditional publishing world now, I think it's really hard to get a book noticed, especially for a debut author. It happens, of course it happens. But it feels like that whole world is in flux right now and there are so many people publishing independently and really doing it well. It is a lot of work and the big downside, I think, is not having that kind of support system and team behind you that can look at your book and say, “I see exactly where this fits in the market and this is how we're going to reach that audience.” So when you publish yourself, you've got to figure all that out.

But the flip side of it is, you can get your book out there. And if you're willing to the do the work, do the marketing - which you're going to have to do anyway - there's no reason for somebody not to get their work out into the world and find the readers that want it. It's kind of exciting actually.

When you went through the process, whom did you hire along the way?

I hired Jennie Nash originally as a book coach to look at the overall book and the structure of it and the flow.

After you'd written a draft?

Yes. And then once I got it to where I was happy, I hired an editor. I have a friend who is a freelance editor and she was the one who actually edited for me. And then I hired a proofreader as well. The number one thing that I wanted going the self-publishing route was to make sure that it didn't look like a self-published book. That it wasn't full of typos, that it was well laid out, that the cover looked professional. So I hired all that stuff out, which was a pretty steep learning curve for me. And there are definitely things I would have done differently, but I'm still really proud of how the book came out.

What would you have done differently in retrospect?

As far as the package, nothing. But the distribution... I decided that I would print a large quantity of books and have them delivered to my house. It wasn't a huge number, I think it was maybe 250 or 300 books on the first printing, but when that shows up on your doorstep, there's a lot of boxes. And then I ended up shipping those boxes to Amazon, so double shipping costs there. The second book I used Create Space and Ingram's Lightning Source. Through those two channels I'm able to distribute to all the major online bookstores.

The thing you don't get with self-publishing is access to major brick and mortar bookstores. So that's definitely a downside. Just being able to do bookstore events, for example. Like my local Barnes & Noble said, “Oh we'd love to have you, but your book is not in our catalogue so we can't sell your book here.” But that's changing; I think they're now including self-published authors in their catalogue. And then I did a couple of events at independent bookstores where they took books on consignment, so there's a way around that stuff.

What exactly is Create Space?

So Create Space is Amazon's print-on-demand service. You basically load the book into it and they only sell through Amazon. But they print as needed rather than doing a bulk order and then shipping it. So that's great, that takes that double shipping out of the loop. And then Lightning Source is a similar thing - they are also print on demand - so I can get print books into the online stores like Barnes & Noble but their online version. And then bookstores can order from Ingram, too.

I'm curious to hear more about what you're doing now... It sounds like you're circling back to fiction in an interesting way?

Yeah, I have circled back and am publishing a serial novel online, A Strange Companion. I'm doing it on my website and I'm also doing it on Wattpad which is a bit of an experiment; I'm not sure how that's going yet. I'm posting a chapter a week of my novel.

What have you learned so far?

I have learned to listen to my wise friends who told me to make sure I have six fully completed chapters before I start posting, because I'm finding myself at the moment running headfirst against my deadline. But I haven't missed a deadline yet!

So the flip side is that having that deadline is making sure that I get to my desk and I get my writing done. I really just wanted to get my fiction out there, and this is a novel that I've written and rewritten and pitched and rewritten... many, many, many times. And then said, “You know what, this book is going nowhere. I'm going to put it under my bed and forget about it and move on to the next one.” So when I finished a second book, which I'm now currently pitching to agents, I have this book under the bed and say, “I really love this story, I want to get it out there.” And looking if there's a way to start building a readership for fiction and decided, you know, I'm just going to start putting this out there and do it as a serial novel. I know the story. I'm going to make a really clean outline so I know where I'm going, and then write, edit and publish a chapter every week. It's definitely gotten me working on this book again which I probably would have just abandoned. There's an instant gratification factor of putting chapters out there and having people respond to them. It's a little bit nerve-wracking; as you know, even as you get to later drafts of a book, things change and sometimes you need to go backward before you can move forward. But once something's been published that's much harder to do. I would say overall it's been a really good experience. It's been really fun, which sometimes writing can stop being fun when you're trying to get towards a finished product and you're going through, particularly, that revision process. For me the fun part is the new, shiny first draft; you get to your fifth or sixth revision and at some point it stops being fun.

Do you intend to go back and revisit any of it, or is it just going to be whatever has been posted?

At some point I will put it together and publish it as a complete book, but whether I will just put the chapters together and clean it up and publish it, or put it together and take another bigger look and make more significant revisions, I'm not sure yet. But at some point I will put it together and make it available in another format.

Some people really like the serial format where they look forward to a new chapter coming every week. But a couple people said, you know, I like the story but I'm going to wait until it's done because I don't like having to wait a week. I want to binge read the story.

Where did you get this idea from? Do you read other serial novels?

I do not actually. Again, talking about the changes in publishing and that there are so many ways to get your work out there in the world; I'd come across Wattpad, which is a writing and publishing app. It's this whole community of writers and it's more teen writers and young adult stories for the most part, where people really are publishing first drafts online and then getting feedback. It's a really active community... just seeing other writers putting their first few chapters of their novels up there, or publishing novellas or short stories that are spin offs from their published novels. So I've been snooping around, and thought, you know, this is a really good way to get this book out there without me having to commit to doing a complete revision before I do anything with it.

How did you go about building an audience for yourself?

Well, that's partly the reason that I did it actually, is to start building that audience for my fiction. Because it's really hard to build an audience when you don't have anything for them to read as far as fiction. Even though there's some crossover between the fiction and nonfiction, it's still largely a different audience. You know, we get hammered all the way that “you must build a platform, you must build a platform.” And I think it's really hard to do that when you don't have anything to tell people about. So that was one of the reasons that I decided to do this as well, to actually use it to start building a readership so that when the next book comes out, I'll already have a built-in readership.

I'm still on the fence on whether Wattpad is the right place for this, but I'm continuing to publish. What I've done is reach out to people that I already know - so friends, social media, using Facebook, and also then telling my nonfiction, “Hey, if any of you enjoy fiction this is what I'm doing.” It's definitely a slow growth, but it's an ongoing slow growth. It's an experiment. I'm not sure yet if it's going to be a successful experiment; I think it is. But it's serving several purposes and one of those is to start growing an audience and let people know that, “Hey, I write fiction as well.”

How do you access it and what chapter are you on now?

So this week was chapter 15 and that's about the midpoint of the novel; so yeah, the 15 chapters are all posted on my website. And then if you want to subscribe to the newsletter, you get a notification every week when the new chapter comes out.

So you don't have to sign up to Wattpad necessarily?

No. That's part of my experiment to see what kind of readership that generates. But my main focus is publishing it on my website.

In terms of process, what have you found serves you well in doing your work?

As far as having a process, mornings are my writing time and I'm very protective of it. They do get nibbled into of course, because that's life; but I really try to be protective of the morning. What I've discovered about the way I work is that I need to play first. I need to take my idea and play with it, whether that's writing exercises or writing nonsense or writing a lot of stuff that might never make it into a book. For me I need an outline, structure is really crucial before you go into that fully formed first draft. But I need to play around and figure out what it is that I want to write about first. And then put a stake in the ground and say, “Okay, this is the story, this is what I'm going to write.”

I know some writers who are up and at their desk at 7, and 7 to 10 is their writing time. But I need a little bit more flexibility in there. But I do try to get there every day and do something, at least touch the work, even if words don't end up on the page.

To learn more about Lisa Manterfield, visit lisamanterfield.com

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A Conversation with Glorious Owens

I had the honor of attending a POPS The Club meeting at Venice High School a couple of weeks ago. If you don't know about this organization, then let me introduce you. POPS -- aka The Pain of the Prison System -- was created to support young people who have a loved one who is incarcerated. Did you know that 2.7 million children have a parent in prison? To think that a child can visit but cannot touch his mother or father is heart-wrenching.

Co-founders Amy Friedman and her husband Dennis Danziger are deeply woven into the fabric of our storytelling community in LA. They started the first club at Venice High School in 2013 (in Dennis's classroom) and have begun to expand across Los Angeles and other states. POPS has even caught the attention of the White House!

POPS members are encouraged to write and share their stories, many of which have been compiled into published anthologies. Below you'll find an interview with POPS member Glorious Owens, a remarkable young writer who is shining her light.

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GLORIOUS OWENS is a soon-to-be-graduating senior at Venice High School where she has participated as a member of POPS The Club. She's from South Central LA and is one of eight kids. As a writer, she recently won first place in the Beverly Hills Literary Society contest, and one of her essays will also be performed at the “Street Angels” gala evening at the Kirk Douglas Theater. Glorious will be attending El Camino College this fall where she'll be studying to become a social worker, and South Central Scholars will be mentoring and guiding her through college and university.

To read her prize-winning essay, click here!

POPS The Club is devoted to enhancing the lives of those students who have been impacted by the pain of the prison system (aka POPS) -- those with incarcerated loved ones and those who have been incarcerated themselves. Spear-headed by Executive Director Amy Friedman, POPS establishes and sustains high-school clubs that offer students community and emotional support as well as opportunities to publish the writings and artwork they create through the club.

Karin: What is your relationship to POPS?

Glorious: My relationship to POPS is that my father, my grandmother, my cousins -- almost half of my family, maybe a little bit more -- have been incarcerated at one point or another, on my mom's and my dad's side. And some of them have been affiliated with drug addiction. My mom's side - her dad and her mom were drug addicts. On my dad's side - his dad and his mom were drug addicts. So all my life -- all 18 years -- I saw things. It was like a vision of a movie. You think none of this could happen in someone's life, but it does. It actually happens and what do you do with it?

Like what? What are some of the visuals in your movie?

Basically I have seen people selling drugs, face to face. Somebody in my family getting caught for it and sent to jail. Someone getting beat up, jumped. Seeing my grandma in jail, going to visit her. Going through the process of literally taking almost everything off and getting searched. It feels degrading and makes you never want to go there. And my dad - I had never seen my dad in prison - but every other year it seemed like he would go back for something. He would always clean himself up and then go back. And my parents would say, he was 'on vacation, vacation, vacation' because I was little. But I knew better. I was like, why would he go on vacation for one to two years and not come see his kid?

They didn't take you to see him?

No, because they thought I didn't know!

But you went to see your grandma.

I went to go see my grandma, because we were super close -- we were like two peas in a pod. We always hung out. She was basically my babysitter and I was always with her no matter what the time was. When she went, I was one of the first people to know, because me and my grandma were that close. And she knew I understood what was going on, she knew I wasn't a slow child. And she just told me what happened, “Okay, I'm going for this, and I'm gonna be gone for a while. Just make sure you send me mail and come see me,” and all of that stuff. So it was one of those traumatizing experiences, “Now my grandma is going, like what's going on?” And it was continuous blows.

Someone that I love is getting taken from me. Now I have to go back, and someone I love is being taken from me again. I have to keep going, I have to keep pushing.

Keep pushing what?

Keep pushing like... they want you to succeed. Everybody wants you to succeed. But they keep doing stuff bad, so why do I have to succeed when you can't even do it? It's like, “What's the point? You guys aren't even gonna be here to see it. So why should I have to do anything?” It was stupid, I don't know why I would think that it was a really good excuse to not do anything.

And then you continue the cycle.

It's like... okay, I have to keep fighting, I have to keep doing homework. I'm gonna be somebody when I grow up. I'm gonna make sure everybody's alright, they don't have to worry about money. It always seemed like we were worrying about money. Anything that had to do with it ended up around money. So it was like... okay, I'm gonna be somebody who can make money and make sure that everybody in my family is okay, everybody's set. I don't have to worry about anything. But it felt like I was always the one who cleaned up the mess. Even though they don't think that, they think they did it on their own. Of course they think that!

But you always have someone who helped you get somewhere, even though you worked toward it yourself. Somebody helped you along the way to get where you are. Somebody who told you to get your life together... somebody who helps you, literally sits you down right there as you do your work. Or a passerby who happens to give you a hello that gonna make you smile for the rest of your day. It was always one of those things -- always being positive, always knowing how to help somebody. You never know what somebody's going to be going through.

So that's basically how I was, always a smile. There's no reason not to have a smile! Even if you're sad.

What gave you the motivation to rise above?

I didn't want to be like them, at all. I know jail is not for me. I know that I don't want to be on the streets. I know I don't want any type of pain to be inflicted on my family -- emotional, mental -- I don't want any of that. What I have to go through, I don't want them to ever have to go through. I don't want to have to add on to anything. It's already enough.

When it comes to POPS, how has it helped you?

It gave me a voice to whatever I'm thinking. Like how I'm talking to you now... I couldn't do this last year, at all. I don't tell anybody my business. I used to never even speak about anything. And then I came to Mr. Danziger's class and he told me about POPS, and he had us write stories about our lives. And that's when I was like, “I actually get to tell my story? Are you sure?” And he was like, “Yeah, you get to tell your own story. Write down everything that happened in your head and everything that you know happened.” And not be judged for it. Not have somebody tell you, “Are you sure that actually happened to you? Are you positive? That's not how it went.”

Everybody has their own story to tell, and everybody has their own perspective on it. But it was my perspective. This is what I felt; this is what happened when I see it. And people get to read that and understand. And you have people in POPS who understand what you went through because they have gone through the same situation. And so that's why it was a very good experience for me.

Was there anything challenging about it?

Just writing the story. And actually telling people my story, that was the hard part. Because it was like, “I don't want people to really know about me. That's none of their business. This was my story, but do I really want to put it out there?” That was the main thing. I've never been big on talking about myself but now I get to talk about myself full force. So what do I do? I was like, “Okay, I'll give you a little bit.” And Mr. Danziger was like, “No, I want more. I want you to actually put your whole life on the paper.” And that's what I did. It was my life and other peoples' lives. My mom would tell me stories about how her and my dad met, or how they would play basketball together,

I was playing basketball from elementary school all the way up to my freshman year, and I still play with my dad. Sports was the main affiliation with our family. In order for you to go somewhere you have to do a sport. And so this was something that I didn't have to do a sport for! I didn't have to work out. I can actually do this and get noticed for it -- besides having to do volleyball or basketball or run track. So it was a big eye-opener for me. I didn't expect this. I didn't even really expect anyone to notice me. I've always been a team player, all these team sports, team, team, team. I was always doing something for somebody. I was always fighting for somebody - for something, for your school, for a friend. You want to win because it's what all of us want. And this was something that was just for me. Even though it's technically for somebody - it's for POPS. They helped me. So I'm giving something back.

But it's your story. 

So what did you realize after the fact, in writing down your story, that you didn't know before?

There's always gonna be one or two people who have gone through the same thing and don't know what to do. If they're in that situation in that moment and they see my story, they might go the opposite direction. Instead of doing what their friends or somebody else told them to do, they'll take the right road. I want people to understand that they're not alone in whatever they're going through. They're not alone. Even though they may think, “You'll never understand my story.” Everyone has a different story, but there's always going to be a similarity to your story.

What about the personal aspect?

It's still one of things, like, I don't like you knowing! Because now when people see me, you see my story, not me. It's like, “That's how you are, how can you change that fast? How can you be so positive? You're faking it.” That's how I feel like people see me. I can tell you my story, but I'm a completely different person from my story. I'll do my best to help anybody in need in every possible way that I can. It's like, “How can you go from this background to this?” I don't know how to tell people the transition; I just tell you my story.

Isn't part of your story how you changed -- how you grew through it -- how you've transformed and become the person that you are? Or is that still evolving in terms of what you've written?

I feel like it's still evolving because all that stuff is still me. I feel like they see that part, and that's the bad part. That's still me. But I'm still pushing forward to that other me, the one I want to be.

That's a beautiful story, I'd love to read that.

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