Hidden Truth

Here is the review for those with access to the journal.  For those without access, I have attached the text below:

Reviewed work(s): Hidden Truth: Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison. By Adam D. Reich. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Pp. xviii+270. $21.95 (paper).

Anthony Christian Ocampo

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

In Hidden Truth: Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison, Adam Reich explores the role of masculinity in perpetuating the social marginalization of young men who have passed through the Rhode Island Training School. The Training School is located in Providence, and the men hail mainly from low-income neighborhoods plagued by economic woes associated with deindustrialization. Combining interviews of Training School residents and staff with his participant observation as a volunteer writing teacher, the author aims to show how the young residents negotiate the competing cultural value systems of their neighborhood and the school in their presentation of self, behaviors, and personal interactions. He effectively combines sociological analysis with memoir-style writing, which makes the book an appealing read, particularly for scholars and students of gender, criminology, and social inequality.

One of the most significant contributions of the book is that it maps out the conflicting meanings of masculinities of the streets and the Training School. Appropriating Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “fields,” Reich proposes that the boundaries of masculinity are maintained through “the game,” the particular terminology he adopts from his respondents. The game in the neighborhood context and the Training School are quite different, yet both serve to reify young men’s marginal position within the larger society. In the streets, outsider masculinity is sustained through the Game of Outlaw, and it entails the valuing of an oppositional culture that applauds violence as a method of maintaining respect, subjugation of women, flashy clothing, and active disloyalty to local authorities. Such outward displays of masculinity, in turn, put young men at the greatest risk of becoming part of the criminal justice system. In contrast, insider masculinity emerges within the Training School from the Game of Law, and it promotes character building, respect for women, and obedience to authority among the young residents. However, this too further marginalizes the men, as it merely “turns submission into sport” (p. 32). This form of masculinity, though aligned with positive values of the dominant society, serves as a nominal measure of rehabilitation for the Training School staff and merely aids the functionality of institutional operations.

Reich further argues that young men who are exposed to these competing forms of masculinity are then well positioned to provide a “pure critique” of the game in both the neighborhood and the Training School. These men also engage in “critical practice,” or a denouncement of the symbols associated with the Game of Outlaw. In this respect, Hidden Truth is part of a long line of sociological texts that highlight the benefits of becoming proficience in two different cultural value systems. For example, the work of Prudence Carter (Keepin’ It Real: School Success beyond Black and White [Oxford University Press, 2005]) talks about how low-income minorities who “straddle” the value systems of the neighborhood and the school are able to maintain social support and earn the highest grades among their peers. However, unlike Carter’s study, there are practically no material gains that emerge from engaging in pure critique or critical practice because the structural conditions of these men remain unchanged. In fact, the overwhelming power of the Game of Outlaw often facilitates young men’s “graduation” into adult prisons. Nonetheless, Reich attempts to pinpoint windows of opportunity for at-risk men to turn their lives around. For example, chapters 5 and 6 elucidate the importance of alternative spaces, such as the Broad Street Studio, for men to negotiate their identities independent of both the Game of Law and the Game of Outlaw. At the same time, however, the fate of most of the men, especially that of Reich’s primary respondent Anthony, suggests that real change will require more drastic and serious efforts on the part of policy makers.

Though the discussion of multiple masculinities in the neighborhood and the Training School is enlightening, some of Reich’s other claims are less persuasive. First, the idea that the Broad Street Studio is a space that is degendered (i.e., less susceptible to outsider masculinity) is not entirely convincing, at least based on the evidence the author provides. While I agree that providing a space where young men are relatively uncensored provides a unique opportunity for them to explore alternative gender constructions outside the Game of Law and Game of Outlaw, the author does not present the data necessary to persuade readers that these men have become divested in pursuing masculinity. For example, Reich provides two pieces of evidence to extend his claim. First, he includes one respondent’s drawings of creatures that have both male and female sexual body parts. Second, he discusses how young men who previously made homophobic jokes helped recruit audience members for a performance by an openly gay black poet. Neither anecdote adequately supports the idea that young men are committed to “challenging traditional gender norms,” as Reich argues (p. 209), especially given the fact that sexuality researchers have shown that homophobic epithets are prevalent even among gay men themselves.

Another limitation is Reich’s overall treatment of race throughout the book. I appreciated Reich’s historical discussion of how black young men received disproportionately fewer returns from post–Civil Rights reforms, which in turn created the conditions for the Game of Outlaw to thrive in cities such as Providence. However, there is little discussion of the historical conditions that give rise of outsider masculinity among young white or Latino men from low-income neighborhoods. Granted, the author notes the deindustrialization of Providence as one reason, but it is unlikely that this economic downturn affected black, white, and immigrant populations in exactly the same way. I also find it troubling that the primary comparison in the book is between African-American and white men, with little reference to the unique situation of Latino men. This is intriguing considering that Latinos (mainly Dominicans) constitute about one-third of the populations of both Providence County and the Training School, the main field site of the book.

Despite these limitations, Hidden Truth makes important contributions for helping understand the relationship between masculinity and criminality among men from low-income neighborhoods. The infrastructure of the book’s argument will surely help scholars conceptualize unique and ambitious approaches to more precisely understanding how culture, gender, and social inequality are continually reinforced in the everyday experiences of those who are racially and socioeconomically marginalized.

http://www.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=914360&evid=1

Shhhhh!  It’s a secret:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thesecretlivesofmen

What:  Brown Bag Lunch Seminar.

When:  12pm.

Where:  Brown’s Taubman Center for Public Policy, 67 George Street, Providence RI.

What:  Interview on “The Secret Lives of Men,” with Chris Blazina.

When:  3pm EST.

Where:  Broadcast from Nashville, but streaming at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thesecretlivesofmen.

It was great to be back in Providence, where my friends will listen to me talk and even laugh at my jokes!

Where: University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94704.

When:  5:30pm

Admission:  Free!

No juvenile is permitted to leave any lasting record of them having been at the Training School, purportedly to protect them when, after turning eighteen, their juvenile record is cleared.  Most of the kids are on the cusp of the age of majority, meaning that this is their last time getting locked up at the Training School before being sent to the Adult Correctional Institution (or ACI) down the street.  Still, aside from the menacing gates around the perimeter, the Training School – upon arrival – feels more like a high school than a prison.

I was not so far out of high school myself when I left Brown at the end of that school year to continue working with young men after release.  Tony was released at the beginning of September, around the time I was quite consciously not returning to classes, and we became the two newest employees of the Broad Street Studio, a local arts not-for-profit that worked with young people inside the Training School and post-release.  A week later was 9/11.  That day, Tony and I drove silently through the streets of south Providence, some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, listening to Tony’s tape of the black radical group Dead Prez.  Occasionally, on my insistence, we’d flip to National Public Radio, where by the afternoon we would hear the beginnings of hte calls for war.  For all the time I had spent in the Training School, I had yet to become familiar with these streets.  And it struck me, quite viscerally, that these neighborhoods were their own kind of ground zero.

The name of the newspaper, Hidden TREWTH, was definitively not my idea.  One of the most artistically inclined of the young men in our first workshops had drawn out the title in graffiti style.  I’ve never been able to determine whether he intentionally misspelled “truth,” or whether it was an accident, but once it had been misspelled there was no turning back.  The group was attached to the misspelling, and perhaps only grew more so when I started to plead. 

“People will think you can’t spell,” I kept arguing in our workshops as we approached our first press deadline. 

“We don’t care,” many answered back.  “This is for us, not for them.” 

In between workshops, I tried unsuccessfully to convince Laura we should overrule the group and print it “truth.”  After all, we were the editors, and we were sending it to the printer.

“People will think they’re idiots,” I pleaded. 

“Adam, they decided on it.  You can’t just change it.” 

It was an early lesson for me in what collaboration entailed, and in the relationship between the identities these young men were declaring for themselves through participation in the paper and the world to which they wrote.  They wanted to be heard, but they wanted to be heard on their own terms.  It was Anthony who came up with a compromise on which we could all agree:  “trewth” would be an acronym.  And after another lengthy debate over what “trewth” could possibly stand for, Hidden TREWTH (Tabloid Realism Enlightening Worldz Troubled Humanity) was born.

The Hidden Truth book tour begins here at AS220, the super-powered non-profit in Providence, Rhode Island, which continues to house the newspaper Hidden TREWTH.  Come and hear me speak about the book and meet the people who continue to do great work in and out of the Rhode Island Training School.

Where:  AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI 02703

When:  August 19, 6-8pm

Admission:  Free!