In 2014, I had the extraordinary opportunity to teach a writing class to men serving death sentences at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. After several months, against the advice of a prison employee who cautioned me against advertising my stance on the death penalty, I write an op-ed published in the local newspaper arguing that people on Death Row are not the monsters we imagine. Two weeks later, I received a letter from the prison warden.
Dear Ms. Castillo,
It is in the best interest of all parties concerned that you be dismissed as a Community Volunteer. Therefore; effective immediately, you will not be allowed to enter the facility as a Community Volunteer. I thank you for your service to Central Prison.
Shaken by my sudden dismissal, I nonetheless vowed to keep in touch with my students, whom I considered friends. I began writing to several men on Death Row, including George Wilkerson, serving a death sentence since 2006 for double homicide.
“I’m at a low point in my life. If I can’t connect to others emotionally, I can’t be human.”
“When people first meet or hear about me, it’s usually in respect to the worst things I’ve done,” he wrote in his first letter to me. “But you, well, I’ve only heard the good about you. Both are inaccurate portraits because they paint us a black-and-white people, when in reality humanity lies on a spectrum.”
Sometimes George wrote poetry or veered into philosophical musings. He had a sharp sense of humor and insights into human nature that challenged my assumptions about people in prison.
But several months after we started writing, his tone changed.
“It’s been several years since anyone new has entered my life and I could see myself getting close to them,” he wrote. “You’re the first in like four years. I’ll be honest. I’ve about given up on writing letters thinking I can have any real relationships via correspondence . . . every time a person fades away, it hurts me. I started going numb, Tess. I’m at a low point in my life. If I can’t connect to others emotionally, I can’t be human.”
His letter continued, asking me to commit to friendship—no drifting apart, no forgetting to write—or to stop writing to him. He feared watching the letters dry up as new relationships and responsibilities entered my world, while his need for friendship stayed constant.
In a follow-up letter he wrote, “Many [volunteers], like you, have come into our lives, people who get to know us, see our vulnerabilities, who tell us we’ve changed their lives, who tell us how important it is to keep sharing our humanity, who tell us they care about us and are our friends. Yet they keep their distance emotionally. Their mouths and hearts are doing two different things.”
George explained the difference between seeing men in prison as human and valuing them as individuals. Outside prison, most people view each other as human beings and sympathize with others’ pain. But Death Row residents struggle even for the basic recognition they are people. Labeling them monsters makes it easier to justify executing them. George wanted more than pity. He wanted people to see him as an individual with a distinct personality, interests, strengths and flaws. He wanted people to care about him because of his uniqueness.
“When I told you that I was at a low point and that I felt if I couldn’t connect to others emotionally I couldn’t be human, a large part of it flowed from my experience with the volunteers here,” he wrote. “My family and friends from the street had already faded away. New ‘pen pals’ had come and gone, making me think it was all but impossible to connect with people I didn’t get to interact with in person or at least by phone. Making friends in here with other prisoners presents its own risks and obstacles. So I’d reached this point where I’d realized how effective this prison is, with its insurmountable brick walls and gun towers—both literal and metaphorical—at alienating every one of us.”
George’s plea for a meaningful, long-term friendship moved me because it resembled a similar appeal I had once made. A couple years prior, my husband’s sudden request for divorce had left me so distrustful I hesitated even to let friends into my life. I had expressed these insecurities to a woman whose understanding and patience helped break down my walls. We later became best friends. Recognizing that one person’s commitment to friendship can restore the trust destroyed by another’s betrayal, I agreed to be a friend—a real friend—to George.
The decision marked a turning point. For the first time I allowed conversations to broach personal topics such as my struggles with single parenthood. George listened when I needed to vent, called out my poor decisions, and offered advice when asked. Once, I reconnected with a long-lost friend because George urged me to set aside my pride and reach out to her.
The connection with George affected my relationships with my other correspondents from prison. I realized that by sticking to non-personal conversations, I was guilty of the artificial friendships George had described in his letter. It wasn’t fair to expect long, vulnerable letters yet refuse to offer the same. People in prison want friends, but they also want to be friends, to comfort someone else.
Trust and friendship with each man grew, but the process wasn’t always harmonious. Abrupt swings between attempts at connection and fear of abandonment marred my early relationship with Alim, a large, bi-racial man from my writing class. Twice he cut off correspondence with me—the first time when I proposed this book and the second time over religious differences. Both times he relented. I interpreted his see-sawing as evidence of a person taught to abandon others before they abandon him.
Alim argued, challenged, and prodded in his letters. I often felt tested, as though he pushed me away to see if I’d come back. Letters of searing vulnerability followed his emotional storms.
Alim wrote once, “I’d much rather have a quick gunshot to the head or the heart than endure this type of agony [in prison]. It’s excessive. I committed a crime. I deserve to be punished. Well then take me and blow my brains out right away, but don’t do me like this! 24 years of torment?! I didn’t torment any of my victims like this. This is the type of shit that will make a mind unravel. It breaks you. My back is bowed over. My shoulders are slumped. I’ve lost my hair. My beard is white. I’ve gained 100 pounds from stress. This shit will make you lose your sanity until you are falling apart. I don’t want to get out of bed sometimes. It’s a shame when the only relief you can hope for is death.”
Sometimes, Alim’s letters began terse and polite, then out of nowhere angst poured off the pages.
“I hate this shit, you know,” he wrote another time. “Feeling like I have to explain myself. How can I not? You didn’t ask me about [my crimes], but yet I feel like everyone I meet wants to know. Everyone wants to peep inside and satisfy that curious urge . . . I didn’t intend to start writing about this when I began this letter. But as soon as I mentioned that today marks the 24th anniversary of my crimes all those feelings and thoughts began to surface. Like oh shit, I have to explain. I don’t want to explain. How can you gloss over something like that? I want to be understood. Without an explanation the lighting is dim, dark. But explanations take too much time, too much energy—I have to GO THERE. I don’t want to go there. Why am I telling you all this? These are just the rambling inner thoughts of a tortured soul.”
Over years of correspondence, I received many rambling inner thoughts of tortured souls. The men yearned to be heard, understood, and cared for, but they also wanted to care for someone else.
George wrote, “Having no deep relationships deprives us of the richness humanity has to offer, to love with all our hearts, to laugh till we cry, to grieve till we feel almost dead. Life isn’t meant to be bland and comfortable and safe and painless.”
The true genius of prison as punishment is not to lock men in cages or condemn them to die, but to starve them of love.
From Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row by Tessie Castillo, published on March 12 by Black Rose Writing. Excerpted with permission.