What It’s Like to Share Art and Letters With Queer Prison Inmates

For 36-year-old Alan*, a bisexual man who has been incarcerated since a very young age and sentenced for life at a California prison, opening up about his sexual identity in prison is never something that he’s wanted.

“All I want is to find some sort of happiness and be treated with dignity and respect just like any other human being,” he recently wrote to his Vancouver pen pal, Mith. “That’s how I’m coming to you, not as a bisexual man or even a man, I’m just coming to you as a soul seeking friendship.”

Alan and Mith have been writing to each other for just over a year through the Prisoner Correspondence Project—a solidarity project based out of Concordia University that links LGBTQIA2+ prisoners in Canada and the United States with pen pals who are part of these same communities outside of prison.

Each of Alan’s letters average 16-pages long, and through detailed descriptions of his day-to-day life, he gives a sense of what it is like being an incarcerated queer person, from handling rude questions to best shower practices.

Alan bathes everyday in his cell’s sink to avoid the lack of respect he sees in prison showers. Straight inmates are known to pick fights with queer and trans inmates, or claim people like Alan are making sexual advances. “So to avoid all of that I do not get involved,” says Alan.

The pen pal project started in 2007 when volunteers at Concordia took on extra letters from a similar group in North Carolina. The group now manages hundreds of people writing to prisoners, has over 3,000 inmate contributors, and an “inside collective” across the US and Canada helping steer the project.

Pen pals learn that no queer or trans inmate’s experience is exactly the same. Dawn*, a trans woman incarcerated in a men’s prison in British Columbia lives with agoraphobia and PTSD, on top of the immense transphobia she faces.

“The harassment got so bad I was almost killed and the guards were complicit in the attempts to kill me. I had to start pinning my door, essentially making it impossible for my door to open. Other inmates kicked into my room while I was on the toilet once,” she wrote in her first submission to the project. On top of that, personal items were stolen from her cell, she said.

Both Alan and Dawn stay closeted for safety reasons.

“The discrimination from both other inmates and guards can be incredibly stressful for people to deal with, especially if they don't have networks on the outside to turn to for support,” says Ellen MacAskill, a Prisoner Correspondence Project volunteer who helps match queer prisoners with people on the outside.

But through the project, inmates can begin forging support networks. Alan doesn’t have any friends on the inside, so he finds comfort in Mith who is willing to know who he really is.

“When he does express feelings of sadness or depression, he follows it with a generally healthy perspective,” Mith told VICE, adding they generally avoid straight-up advice since their experiences and environments are so different.

In prison, outside lines of communication aren’t a guarantee, so outreach is almost entirely though word of mouth. The team of volunteers usually gets in touch with prison resource libraries to spread the word to inmates through posters. Word then travels within the network prisons have with one another across Canada and the US to further spread the word. The result is about 20 new prisoners joining every week.

“When I tell my friends I’m part of this project, they just think we sit around and write pen pals for like six hours a week. But we get like 200 letters from people all around the country,” says MacAskill.

Some pen pals, like Bexx of Denver, Colorado, keep up with multiple inmates. Bexx identifies as bisexual or asexual, and writes to inmates Neil* and Joe* in New Mexico and Indiana, respectively.

“Neil had a horrific childhood and does not speak to his family. I think I am about the only friend he has outside the prison,” Bexx told VICE. “I think I also give him someone and something to care about.” With Joe, she emails two to three times a week.

Bexx is also in the process of sending Neil and Joe art supplies with the intention of helping them sell their creations to put money into their commissary accounts. “Neil and I are talking about making some Mexican-themed coloring books and Joe was already painting handkerchiefs when we met.”

When VICE spoke to Bexx, she was waiting for one of those hankies to arrive in the mail so she could try setting up an Etsy store to sell his art.

According to MacAskill, art exchanges are pretty common: “When I open an envelope and I see art it makes my day. Like pictures of Justin Bieber and topless men and zoo animals. We have a bunch of them plastered around the office.”

While many letters are lighthearted, the project also comes into contact with prisoners who are in search of more serious requests.

“People write to us in crisis situations or asking for legal help. But we are not trained lawyers, we just send resources,” adds Ellen. “We do what we can and send a sympathetic ear or smut.” (Prisons love to reject porn, but people really appreciate it when it gets to them.)

Since prisons make few accomodations for queer inmates—Canadian prisons are just beginning to place transgender prisoners in holdings that match their gender—the pen pal project also sends zines and information specific to queer and trans health, like information on hormones, safe sex, and even tattooing—and of course, porn.

As much as the project helps these prisoners, the pen pal program also greatly aids people on the outside as well. 28-year-old Terra from Toronto, who identifies as bisexual, has been writing to someone imprisoned in Texas, and in doing so has come to embrace the mundane.

“My pen pal expressed a want to have ‘normal’ conversations where they don’t have to talk about oppression, trauma, negativity, or drama,” she told VICE. “We mostly write about TV shows, our love of animals, taking care of plants, and whatever else comes up.” Sometimes it’s the small stuff that makes the biggest difference.

*Some names have been changed.

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