The Study Group Bringing bell hooks to Prisons

The Study Group Bringing bell hooks to Prisons
Next City by Emily Nonko
4/3/19

In a bare, brightly lit classroom inside the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, California, Richie ‘Reseda’ Edmond-Vargas taught one of his last lessons on patriarchy and toxic masculinity to a group of men who, like him, were incarcerated there. Several years after developing this curriculum, Edmond-Vargas was preparing to transfer to one last facility before ultimately returning to society.

On long sheets of brown paper he broke down tenets of toxic masculinity, asking men to consider the payoffs and costs of buying into values like violence, objectifying women and having money. Men threw out suggestions relating to the costs: bad relationships, loneliness, life in prison.
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“We’re all pretty clear on the problem,” Edmond-Vargas says, “What’s the solution?” In response, a facilitator with the group, also incarcerated, stood up to read a passage from bell hooks’ book on toxic masculinity, The Will to Change.

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