Writer Rachel Kushner: 'All my former friends went down the wrong path' Critical novel about the US prison world

In her novel Club Mars writer Rachel Kushner shows what the life of an inmate looks like inside the four walls. 'I like to include people in my life who have been made invisible in our society.'

No mercy

Thousands of women are incarcerated in Chowchilla, the jail that served as a model for the writing of Club Mars by Rachel Kushner. Kushner's protagonist Romy Leslie Hall, a lap dancer at the seedy Club Mars, was sentenced to two life sentences plus six years as a young woman; in a panic, she killed a customer who kept stalking her. For murder, even if committed in self-defence or in a fit of adolescent recklessness, California knows no mercy. Even teenagers disappear behind bars for the rest of their lives.

Chowchilla

Kushner (b. 1968) knows what she is writing about - she has been volunteering for Justice Now for about six years, and in doing so, she got to know many inmates at Central California Women's Facility, the official name of 'Chowchilla'. Snippets of their experiences ended up in her book, but her volunteer work was not intended as research for the novel, she stresses tantalisedly.

'I went there not to extract information from people, but because I wanted to include people in my life who have been ostracised and rendered invisible in our society. My book is fiction. I did have a very good adviser and mentor in a friend of mine, who spent 23 years in prison. Her knowledge of prison life over those two decades was nothing short of impressive. She drew maps for me - there is the power station, there are the sceptic tanks -, she explained to me the whole infrastructure of that world, sketched how those thousands of women live there together, how a modern prison functions. Some of her anecdotes I used.'

Disadvantaged neighbourhood

The deprived neighbourhood where Romy lives is painted after the place where you grew up.

'It ís the neighbourhood where I grew up. I don't like autobiographical writing, but to give Romy a true voice and spirit, I needed to be able to tell about her background with authority and deep understanding. After all, when someone spends their life in prison, no new memories or experiences come to mind, and it is likely that they think back a lot about the past. So I situated Romy in my San Francisco neighbourhood, gave her my friends and a series of memories that still vividly stick with me.'

Did many of your friends go down the wrong path?

'Pretty much everyone.'

White middle class

You sit here, as a successful writer. What determines whether or not someone from such a background goes the wrong way?

'That is obvious: they did not have the same background as me. My parents were admittedly poor at the time, and they left me free and alone a lot because they were studying. Sometimes they were away from home for a few days and left money to buy food. But my parents were stable and highly educated. So even though we were poor, culturally we belonged to the middle class. That's the big difference, and I realised that early on. I went to a public school with children whose parents were drug addicts or alcoholics. California prisons hold almost no middle-class people. Detention affects a certain section of the population quite deeply and other strata do not.'

Class differences

Your book is quite critical of the US prison system and those class differences.

[Stingy] 'Why? There is no criticism in the book, it is purely descriptive. I don't have any mission or message. I personally would not like to read a book in which the writer pushes me towards a certain political message, especially if it is fiction.'

You write you that teenagers who have committed a crime are seen as monsters for the rest of their lives, while others - politicians, for example - get away with acts no less criminal.

'That's true, but that statement is based on the trial of a friend of mine when she was 15. The judge called her a monster. That piece too is descriptive, not an indictment, though it is reality. Of course there are reflections in it, because I ask myself questions about this subject. Philosophical questions about laws and justice; theological questions about forgiveness and how it is possible that we live in a country founded on Judeo-Christian values but where there is no room for forgiveness in the legal system.

Violence

In addition, I wanted to think about how we define violence. Most people in prison have committed serious violent crimes, but there are other forms of violence that are less strongly condemned. One of the characters quotes an American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who said: 'I know no worse man than I am.' I wanted to think about what that really means, especially against the backdrop of in differences in social background and how that determines the value of one's life.

Finally, I wondered what it means, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, to accept your fate when that fate is a life sentence. I challenged myself with those questions, because there is no easy answer. My answer is this novel. If people read it and also think about such issues, that's fine, but they are free to draw their own conclusions. It is not my intention to steer their opinions and thoughts in a certain direction.'

Guilt versus innocence

Did it bring you any new insights?

'Definitely. I have come to realise more strongly that our legal system relies on the axes of 'innocence' and 'guilt'. When it comes to someone's life, that way of thinking is not adequate or helpful. It is not that poor people are bad, and rich people are good. Poor people are much more likely to encounter crime and justice, than someone from the middle class like me. When you talk to someone who has committed a crime, that crime often turns out to be a logical corollary. That does not justify that crime, of course, but it makes it more understandable.

To dismiss someone as a monster is to deny that they have a soul. These days, I am better at not judging people purely on what they have done, but seeing them as human beings, complete with a complex life story. I want such people to be part of my life. Keep in touch with them, talk to them. Because it is such a segregated world, people from certain walks of life never have to think about all those in prison. From inmates, I got a lot of good reactions to my book. But perhaps there are also those who wonder why they would want to read it. Because they would rather forget that there are many who do have to deal with that reality.'

Intriguing

Judging by the popularity of thrillers and TV series like Orange is the New Black aren't we precisely interested in crime and detention?

'I haven't seen that series, but of course, crime and punishment are obviously an intriguing part of our world. My novel, I think, is not so much about prison life as it is about the geography of California. It's about the relationship between the landscape and the lives of all these people, and the way this system affects them. California ranks five or six in the world economically. We produce half the food of the United States and also have the entire tech industry, but that economic prosperity mainly benefits the well-educated part of the population.

My hometown of Los Angeles has a high poverty rate. The gap between rich and poor in the city is wide, and is both racially and class-based. A Latino family earns half as much as a white family, and my neighbourhood children are told by their teachers at school that Hispanics don't go to college. The social segregation is huge. That makes LA a cruel environment. As far as I'm concerned, my book is mostly about the times we live in now.'

Which is black and white, literally.

'I think it is frightening for many people to realise that we live in a morally complex world. As a result, everything is divided into good or bad. At least that gives someone the comfortable feeling of 'moral clarity' themselves. I strive every day to try to include people in my life who think and live differently from me. Therein also lies the value of literature. Literature shows a world where there is room for ambiguity, contemplation and different viewpoints and visions, which cannot be condensed into one conclusive truth. In it, there is no place for judgement. For where questions create space, judgments, on the contrary, flatten everything.'