What is the tone in the collection, Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing-a PEN American Center Prize Anthology?

Various tones are found through the book. Some of the prison writing was remorseful, such as Larry Bratt in "Giving Me a Second Chance." Bratt was convicted of a double homicide. "But having been incarcerated now for fourteen years, I can say unequivocally that I want to change my life. I have remorse not only for the wasted years of my youth (I'm now fifty-four) but for the deaths of the two people I was convicted of killing. And as a result of these feeling, I have made a commitment to never again repeat a malicious act." (39)

Others provided information as to how the prison writing programs have changed their lives. The six women that worked in a writer's workshop provided details as to how the women felt being apart from their children. It was the Bedford Hills Writing Workshop located in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Beford, New York. They benefited from getting together to share and express themselves, along with changing their lives. Publishing 2 books gave the women an audience who was willing to read about their plights.

Unfortunately some of the horrible truths and realities of the harshness in the prisons was recorded, such as the guards instructing inmates to beat other inmates in "First Day on the Job" by Henry Johnson. The author wrote, "Wild Bill, your squad commander, shackled nigger convicts to the wall and we beat hell out of them with rubber hoses 'n such. Lord, the screams in that place, the heat and smell of blood." (178)