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Dystopia

by Ed Griffin and Mike Oulton

430 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-2167; ISBN 1-4251-5003-9; US$26.90, C$30.93, EUR20.97, £13.90

Mike Oulton is doing ten years for smuggling cocaine. Teacher Ed Griffin coaches men to write about the inhumanity of prison. They meet and neither is the same again.

About the Book

Dystopia is a book about going to prison. Mike Oulton went to prison for trying to smuggle fifteen kilos of cocaine into the United States. Ed Griffin went to prison to cause a revolution. He wanted men to write their stories and when the public discovered the horror of prison, the walls would come tumbling down.

Both had a lot to learn.

Mike counts the years and the days until he can get back on the street; Ed numbers the converts to his revolution. One day they meet in a classroom and friendship changes both of them.

The book takes readers through some of North America's worst prisons. The story follows the two men on their different paths. The reader watches Ed trek into American and Canadian prisons to teach murderers and thieves how to write. Mike, a convicted drug smuggler and habitual criminal, tries to survive the dangers of a Mexican prison and the emotional torment of one of Canada's worst penitentiaries.

Both men tell stories of the characters they meet along the way and both show the reality of prison, not the media image.

Reviews

"We recognize that the offender has the potential to live as a law-abiding citizen."  Correctional Service of Canada, Core Value (2 of 5).

No matter your experience with prisons or prisoners, Dystopia is bound to influence your opinion about both. But this book is about more than the politics and ethics of incarceration. The honesty with which social activist and educator, Ed Griffin, and prisoner and writer, Mike Oulton, share their stories makes for an insightful read into the healing power of writing and friendship.

Oulton writes candidly, and richly, about his life as a criminal and prisoner. His is a common tale among prisoners of childhood dysfunction, but he doesn't use it to excuse the choices he's made. The anecdotes he shares leave us feeling vulnerable. This guy could be anybody we know. But Oulton is likeable and, as a result, the adage 'hate the sin, not the sinner' becomes our mantra as his personality emerges and we recognize his potential, and will, to walk a new path.

Griffin takes us on a journey of self sacrifice through which he tempers the demons of his own past. He leaves no question about his disdain for the prison system. Though he may be idealistic at times, his belief in his crusade to effect change through art (writing) is genuine. We feel it. As their friendship develops, Oulton's adoption of and constant challenge to these ideals inspires parallel personal growth in Griffin.

Ready to confront your own convictions?  I highly recommend this book."

Mary Ellen Reid

About the Author

Mike Oulton had his sights set on getting published from the first time he went to a creative writing class. For years he read books on how to write and he practiced by just writing. After many short stories, one novel, twenty-three screen plays and a TV series, Mike is confident that he has what it takes to become a publishable author.

Mike got out of prison on July 16, 2007 after a ten year sentence. He has known the inside of a prison all his life. From the age of twelve, Mike has been in and out of jail for crimes such as theft and drug dealing. It wasn't until he was caught buying and smuggling drugs out of a foreign country that he actually opened his eyes and saw the direction his life was headed - to a lonely place stuck behind prison walls.

Mike is blessed with a great family and a daughter he credits for his desire to change his life around. Through one three-year period when he wasn't in prison, he developed a professional boxing career in which he went undefeated. Mike considers his passion to survive and his eagerness for challenge two of his greatest qualities.

Parental abuse, crime and jail filled his early life, but he knows he has the ability to make a strong finish. This book is about just that. It's the story of Mike's ability to start over again.

Ed Griffin patiently serves his self-imposed life sentence as an idealist. Despite constant efforts by his betters, he offends and re-offends, criticizing the society around him.

Early years did not reveal this tendency. Raised in a caring. hard working Catholic family, he entered the seminary at an early age, earned the respect of the authorities and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1962.

But stirring beneath 'that nice young priest' dwelt an affinity for radical Christianity and American equality. Griffin marched with Doctor Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. 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 novel, Beyond the Vows.

Griffin's father used to tell him, "Never forget the underdog." In 1985 Griffin began to live this precept in a way that may have horrified his father. Griffin volunteered to teach creative writing in Wisconsin's maximum security prison at Waupun. He felt prison did little more than warehouse men and dehumanize them in the process. He dreamt of creating a cadre of writers who would let the public know the reality of prison. These men would be like Papillon or the Russian, Solzhenitsyn.

Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison. "As Aristotle said, 'art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul'."

The twenty-two years Griffin has spent going to prison also produced his novel, Prisoners of the Williwaw.