“I wanted to echo the lives of others who don’t get an opportunity to write,” remarked author/poet R. Dwayne Betts to the audience in the Science Center's Kennedy Auditorium, for his story was also “the story of people who go nameless.” It soon became clear that, in Betts’ experience, literature was not merely a form of escapism during turbulent times but rather a unifier of people past and present, a way to connect.
“Sixteen years hadn’t even done a good job on his voice,” Betts read aloud from his memoir A Question of Freedom. Though this was originally a quote from a 1968 poem called “For Freckle-Faced Gerald” by Etheridge Knight, it applied well to Betts’ life: at 16, he was arrested for carjacking and ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison. “There are ways a man is tortured that only he can tell you,” Betts continued to read from a section of his book titled “The New World.” This was the world that Betts inhabited for most of his young adulthood, a place where everything “gleamed with the color of violence,” where you had to learn how to “lock the doors inside of yourself,” and where inmates wore their deeds “like badges of honor” because they were “the only thing to protect against the fear.”
“What kept you going?” asked someone in the audience.
“There was a person that got locked up,” Betts answered, “but I wasn’t him.” In prison, he explained, he had to divorce himself from what going on around him, to learn how “to be there and not there.” He often had to laugh at what was going on around him, almost as if everything were a big joke. “But when I was wrong, I tried to recognize that I was wrong.” It was one of Betts’ best methods of survival, both physical and emotional. He also read as much as he could, losing himself in his books. (It was such an ethic that eventually earned him admission to the University of Maryland, where he graduated with top honors and spoke at commencement.) From an early age Betts was enthralled by literature; as a child he often spent time reading prison poetry and prose.
A question was asked: “So how did you change from that 14-year-old to a 16-year-old who couldn’t avoid the pitfalls he had read about?”
“I didn’t really have an opportunity to experience it as real,” Betts explained. “It was more conceptual.” As exemplified by the very discussion in the auditorium, Betts argued that – for all of literature’s influence and power – “it’s not reading the books that transforms lives, but the conversations that come after.” He cited playwright August Wilson’s Fences as an example. When he once taught it to a group of children, Betts said that one of the boys grew angered by the protagonist, who cheats on his wife during the course of the play. And discussing what provoked that anger was crucial; that boy “would leave that day evaluating his attitude toward women,” Betts explained.
“When will you tell your son?” someone asked. Micah, Betts’ son, is now just two years old.
“I’m going to have to consult my wife on that one,” Betts noted with a grin. “That’s one thing I learned about marriage.”
“Will you be a hero to him?”
“I’ll play catch with him,” Betts said, “and I’ll brush my teeth in the morning. I’ll always be there.” He explained that he thought heroes aren’t defined by what they do in the public eye, but by what they do in private. “The decisions he makes will depend on where I put him,” Betts stated, briefly betraying a hint of the hard-won knowledge that he has acquired over the years. “My son will have a whole different life.”
“Sixteen years hadn’t even done a good job on his voice,” Betts read aloud from his memoir A Question of Freedom. Though this was originally a quote from a 1968 poem called “For Freckle-Faced Gerald” by Etheridge Knight, it applied well to Betts’ life: at 16, he was arrested for carjacking and ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison. “There are ways a man is tortured that only he can tell you,” Betts continued to read from a section of his book titled “The New World.” This was the world that Betts inhabited for most of his young adulthood, a place where everything “gleamed with the color of violence,” where you had to learn how to “lock the doors inside of yourself,” and where inmates wore their deeds “like badges of honor” because they were “the only thing to protect against the fear.”
“What kept you going?” asked someone in the audience.
“There was a person that got locked up,” Betts answered, “but I wasn’t him.” In prison, he explained, he had to divorce himself from what going on around him, to learn how “to be there and not there.” He often had to laugh at what was going on around him, almost as if everything were a big joke. “But when I was wrong, I tried to recognize that I was wrong.” It was one of Betts’ best methods of survival, both physical and emotional. He also read as much as he could, losing himself in his books. (It was such an ethic that eventually earned him admission to the University of Maryland, where he graduated with top honors and spoke at commencement.) From an early age Betts was enthralled by literature; as a child he often spent time reading prison poetry and prose.
A question was asked: “So how did you change from that 14-year-old to a 16-year-old who couldn’t avoid the pitfalls he had read about?”
“I didn’t really have an opportunity to experience it as real,” Betts explained. “It was more conceptual.” As exemplified by the very discussion in the auditorium, Betts argued that – for all of literature’s influence and power – “it’s not reading the books that transforms lives, but the conversations that come after.” He cited playwright August Wilson’s Fences as an example. When he once taught it to a group of children, Betts said that one of the boys grew angered by the protagonist, who cheats on his wife during the course of the play. And discussing what provoked that anger was crucial; that boy “would leave that day evaluating his attitude toward women,” Betts explained.
“When will you tell your son?” someone asked. Micah, Betts’ son, is now just two years old.
“I’m going to have to consult my wife on that one,” Betts noted with a grin. “That’s one thing I learned about marriage.”
“Will you be a hero to him?”
“I’ll play catch with him,” Betts said, “and I’ll brush my teeth in the morning. I’ll always be there.” He explained that he thought heroes aren’t defined by what they do in the public eye, but by what they do in private. “The decisions he makes will depend on where I put him,” Betts stated, briefly betraying a hint of the hard-won knowledge that he has acquired over the years. “My son will have a whole different life.”
