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Prisoners of the Williwaw
by Ed Griffin
300 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0061; ISBN 1-55212-397-9; US$20.87, C$24.00, EUR17.14, £12.00
Convict Frank Villa reaches deep into history, psychology and penology and comes up with a plan to establish an island prison where three hundred convicts can serve out their sentences, accompanied by their families. He dreams of a new society, of a community founded on the American ideals of freedom and respect for the individual. But Frank soon discovers that he and many others lack the skills needed to build the future. It's one thing to walk out of prison; it's another to melt the bars deep in the soul.
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About the BookWhat would happen if three hundred hardened convicts petitioned the United States Government for an abandoned island where, accompanied by their families, they would be set free to earn their own way? Overwhelmed by prison budgets and prison riots, the government agrees and sets the prisoners free on windswept, treeless Adak in the Aleutians, the site of a former "hard duty" Navy station. Prisoners Of The Williwaw is the story of the power struggle between the idealistic leader of this expedition, convict Frank Villa, and a smooth prison boss, James T. Gilmore. Frank Villa opens a school, arranges jobs for people in a small assembly factory and calls for free elections. "Boss" Gilmore opens a house of prostitution, sells booze, drugs, and guns, and schemes to take over the island one way or another. Frank's struggle is internal as well as external. He strives to overcome the effects of prison on his psyche. A convict must be passive; a man in charge of a community must take command. A convict must build a wall inside himself against any relationship with a woman; a free man has to leave himself open to love. The strife between Villa and Gilmore accelerates when their wives arrive and unexpected complications develop. These conflicts play out against a backdrop of constant rain, vicious windstorms (williwaws), escape attempts, and a coup by a new group of prisoners from the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the worst of the worst.
Review of Prisoners of the Williwaw from The Angolite - November/December 2001 (the most respected prison journal in the U.S.A.) by Douglas DennisPrisoners of the Williwaw is an entertaining novel built on an interesting old premise: What would happen if a bunch of convicts were dumped on an island to fend for themselves? Like William Golding's Lord of the Flies, where a group of adolescent boys is marooned on a desert island, Williwaw explores the moral dilemmas and human reactions arising from an extreme situation.Williwaw begins with an accurate reflection of the current prison world. Prisons are expensive, "no frills" warehouses that do little to prepare the burgeoning prisoner population for successful reentry into society. Riots and violence are countered by even more rules, regulations, and use of force, as prison officials try to control their unruly charges. Frank Villa, a federal prisoner, petitions the U.S. government to place a group of convicts on an abandoned island and allow them to earn their own way. Overwhelmed by rising prison budgets, the government agrees - "It gets tough on crime by putting convicts on a god-forsaken island, yet it saves federal money." Three hundred hard-core convicts, most of them lifers and virtual lifers, are shipped to Adak Island, a cold, treeles, windswept rock in the Aleutians off Alaska. Adak had been a "hard-duty" Navy outpost, and its barracks and buildings become the prisoners' settlement. Navy gunboats patrol the waters with orders to shoot to kill any escaping prisoner, but on the island they supervise themselves. Their families and "significant others," those that wanted to, were allowed to go with them. To get the prisoners started, they are given a money subsidy, food, clothing, and equipment to begin manufacturing light goods on government contract. Self-sufficiency is their goal - to live free while serving their sentences. Violence, theft and strongarming break out immediately as the novel's thematic conflict emerges. To be free, convicts must break out of the prisoner/criminal mentality. Some can and some can't, or won't. Villa and his allies want democracy (an elected government) and responsibility, antagonists want to rule the island by force. This struggle plays out against a backdrop of constant rain, vicious windstorms (williwaws), escape attempts, and a violent takeover attempt by a new group of even harder cons from the federal supermax at Florence, Colorado, the "worst of the worst." Ed Griffin taught creative writing to prisoners for ten years, first in Wisconsin and for the past seven years at Canada's Matsqui prison. He knows prisoners and what they must do to redeem themselves: "Melt the bars. Walk through them," Villa's friends tell him at the start of Williwaw. "Melt the bars. You're a person, not an inmate."
Comments on Prisoners of the Williwaw"Wow. That was some book. I couldn't put it down!"Sue Harper, School Principal
"I found the Prisoners of the Williwaw easy to read and exciting."
Just finished reading Ed Griffin's 'Prisoners of the Williwaw.' This is a great read. Not only a gripping fictional journey, the story offers up some interesting ideas about the ethics of incarceration. This from someone who knows a bit about our penal system.
"With both an outside and inside view, Griffin has grasped an interesting concept for an alternative to prison."
"I found the story to be an interesting concept, with a potential for being a reality."
"It is the story of an elemental battle on so many levels, the struggle against nature and the weather paralleling the struggle between the factions. The basic idea of what is true freedom, and how do you get there, is thought-provoking."
"The book describes how offenders are forced to live and work together, resolving the conflicts in life."
"Two million Americans now sit in prison. Here's a new/old idea that might just provide an alternative. It's a hell of a story."
Last week Friday Ed Griffin's book, Prisoners of the Williwaw, arrived in the mail from Amazon.com. I read it on Saturday. My interest was primarily to see if Ed Griffin could capture the "essence" of life on Adak, and he does a very good job. He proposes Adak as a prison community. Earthquakes have broken the pipes, the wind has destroyed quite a lot, and the prisoners are very unwilling to depend on each other for their lives, which of course is exactly what they must do. |
About the AuthorEd Griffin teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison, a medium security prison in Western Canada. He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. He began his professional life in 1962 as a Roman Catholic priest in Cleveland, Ohio. There he became active in the civil rights movement and marched in Selma with Doctor Martin Luther King. Removed from a suburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleveland*s central city. His years in the Roman Catholic Priesthood are the subject of his next novel. After leaving the priesthood in 1968 he earned a masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was elected to Milwaukee's city council in 1972. Griffin and his wife, Kathy, opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee in 1976. They lived where they worked and shared the joys of raising children and growing flowers. In 1988 the family, Ed and Kathy, Kevin and Kerry, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in the city of Surrey. He is the founder of Western Canada's largest writer's conference, the Surrey Writers' Conference. He has published poetry, plays, short stories and a newspaper column. His writing has won several awards and the American Humanist Society has honored him as the teacher of a prize-winning inmate writer. Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison. "As Aristotle said, 'art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul.'" Visit the author's web site. Click here to read about Ed's up-coming book, Beyond the Vows |
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Sample Excerpt
One of the most dangerous local phenomena occurring in the Aleutians is the "Williwaw." This is a type of wind which results from the damming up of air on windward slopes followed by an overflow of air down the leeward slopes. These gusts often are in excess of 60 knots.U.S. Navy publication, Welcome to Adak
Melt the bars, Frank. Walk through them. Frank Villa heard his cell mate hammering at him in his mind. Melt the bars. You're a person, not an inmate. The guard blocked his passage down the narrow tier. "Inmate Villa, I repeat, 'Throw away the cigarette.'" Frank showed his two hands. "I'm not smoking." "On your ear, Inmate Villa, there's a cigarette." Frank reached up. Sure enough. He had rolled a smoke for his walk back to the cell block, but the teacher he worked for had called him back into the classroom. Frank took the cigarette off his ear and palmed it. "It's not lit, see?" "Throw it away." The cell block guard pointed to the trash can at the end of the tier. Frank hesitated. Throw it away? The equivalent of fifty cents in prison money, an hour's work. Throw it away? "Inmate Villa, I said now." Again his cell mate's words: Melt the bars, Frank. Lose the battle, win the war. He threw the smoke into the can and continued down the tier toward his cell. He bounced his left hand along the bars as he went, to let his anger dissipate into the steel. Prison sucked the balls out of a man and left him as a passive shell. Through fourteen years in prison he had earned a masters in sociology, become a tutor and stayed out of trouble. And still he was Inmate Villa, nothing more. Frank grabbed the last bar of his open cell door and pivoted himself in. He smelled the tea Rudy had brewed for him, strong morning tea. It was 11:15. Rudy sat lotus style on the top bunk, reading. The winter sun shone through the barred window on the outer wall and cast a shadow across his face and down over the book he was reading. Frank stared at the image of the bar. It was Rudy who had taught him all about bars, fourteen years ago. "Melt the bars," Rudy first told him a long time ago when he came to prison. "Walk into the world of knowledge, Frank, and the bars will disappear. Freedom is inside you."
