DannyBoyinExile

Several years ago, I had a friend in the UK who was part of a book club. Once a month, they would all read the same book, then meet together to discuss it. Since she (Debbie) knew that I was an avid reader, and we frequently discussed books, it only made sense to her to make me an honorary member of their group.
I was honored to be included, and was in a book club for the first time in my life. Debbie would send me the books for the upcoming months, I’d read them – then I’d write down my comments and she would share them with the others.
I was exposed to quite a few good books that way, that I may never have read otherwise, so it was a good experience for me. Of course, I was exposed to a few terrible books, that I NEVER would’ve read otherwise – but I always finished them, and wrote down anything at all that I happened to learn from them.
I got quite good at it (learning something even from terrible books, I mean!), and it pleased me to know that my comments would bring more smiles to their faces than some of the books themselves ever could. It got to the point where Debbie would begin their meetings by reading my comments aloud, and they would use that as a basis to start their discussions, and they’d all interject their own comments about what I said.
Fast forward a few years, and Covid has rendered our book club kaput. (If they HAVE reconstituted it, they did it without me!) I still like the idea of a group of people reading the same book and discussing it together. And I like the method of being exposed to new books (and ideas) that I may never have been exposed to otherwise.
Sadly, there is no such thing amongst the inmates of TDCJ. We do read, share, and recommend books for each other to read – but it’s not the same as it was with Debbie and my other friends in the UK. Instead, we adapted the idea and started our own informal movie clubs!
Necessity is often the mother of invention, and that was exactly true in this case. When our only income consists of donations from our friends and families, we don’t have unlimited funds to rent movies on the tablet – and they’re not exactly cheap. (The PRICES, I mean – the movies themselves often ARE pretty cheap!)
We have 48 hours to watch any movie we rent, so we typically let a handful of our associates watch our movies, to make it more worth the money we spent. Of course, nobody wants to be the person footing the bill for their homeboys’ movie watching privileges. (I can assure you that NOBODY thinks that’s a good idea – except for the guys getting to watch free movies!)
So what we do is create informal groups of movie watchers (and movie renters!) who then share our movies with each other. In that way, if there are 3 or 4 of you, and you share them, you get to watch 3 or 4 TIMES as many movies. We even developed “splitters”, so that two people can sit next to each other in the dayroom – each with their own headphones plugged in – and watch a movie together. (Maybe “together” isn’t a word that’s used very often in an all-male prison. “Alongside each other” sounds better!)
Our movie groups have a lot in common with my old book group. We all watch the same movies. We all discuss them together, and recommend them to other people. Most importantly, we expose each other to movies, genres, themes, and ideas we may never have opted for on our own. It’s multiculturalism in action – and we all benefit from it.
I’ve seen action movies, comedies, dramas, history, Black movies, Christian-themed movies, romances, and documentaries. I can’t say that I liked them all. But I made it a point to find something positive even from a terrible movie. I’ve been surprised to actually enjoy movies that I never would’ve even watched, were it not for our movie group. And by being surprised, I learned to be more open-minded about what I was willing to watch in the first place. It may not be entirely legal for us to share our movies with each other (so you should never ADMIT to it!) – but it’s harmless. When people are willing to learn from each other, and SHARE with each other, it’s never a bad thing. So says DannyBoy.