It is March 3rd and it has been raining all day. For me, the dismal drumbeat of rain against the window is more than mere weather; it is as if the heavens are shedding tears. I have lost a dear friend, Nan Groeller. Dan, Nan’s husband called me around 5:30 p.m. to tell me that Nan passed away peacefully earlier that afternoon. The term friend fails to explain our relationship fully; the anthropological category of ‘fictive kin’ is closer, for Nan was my surrogate mother from the Washington University Host Family program who volunteered to help me when I arrived in Saint Louis almost 20 years ago. Nan was also a kind of cultural mentor for me. She helped me understand American family life by unselfishly allowing me to participate in her family’s life and patiently explaining things I found puzzling. Family was very important to Nan, in her immediate role as wife and mother, but also as historian for her own family. She invested years of work tracing her family lineage and its past. The diagram of her ‘family tree’ still occupies the better part of one large wall in her basement. None of us could have imagined at the time I was ‘assigned’ to Nan and Dan how long this relationship would last, or how much I, and later my husband and daughter, would become a part of their family. They were, from the beginning, an integral part of my family here in Saint Louis. In fact, when my parents were unable to come to my wedding, Nan walked me down the aisle at Graham Chapel. As I look back on this long relationship, it is Nan and her family’s generosity to an absolute stranger that strikes me the most. This kind of generosity typifies the best of human nature.

All volunteers to the Host Family program at Washington University and around the country exhibit this generosity. The Host Family program arranges a "family" in the States for international students through the Office for International Students and Scholars at each university. The program’s mission is simple and open-ended: to help international students adjust to a new culture and language. To match students and families, students are asked to fill in their personal information, hobbies, and interests. They are asked about their preference for the make-up of the Host Family: a family with or without children, a one-parent family or an unmarried person. The Host Family volunteers fill in a similar form. The nature of the exchange then depends upon the interests of the student and assigned family.

I do not remember what hobbies and interests I wrote on that form so many years ago, but I do vividly recall my first conversation with Nan. Early conversations were a difficult but extremely beneficial part of the Host Family program. Despite the fact that most international students score high on their writing skills, when they arrive here they are usually weak in listening and speaking skills. Nan asked about my family in China and I remember that it was a very hard test of my spoken English telling her about my grandparents and parents, my aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews in China. I had to refer constantly to my Chinese-English dictionary. Nan and Dan showed me around St. Louis, and among many other events, took me to see Beauty and the Beast at the Fox Theater. They introduced me to American food. I still remember the first barbeque rib dinner I had in their house. After the meal we sat on the small patio behind the house and Nan, who was an accomplished cook, asked me what home-cooked Chinese food was like. I thought it might be easier to cook it than describe it, so I cooked the next time we got together. After a year and the end of their official ‘host’ commitment to me, we continued to invite each other over for a home-cooked meal every few months. They also invited me to their family birthdays, weddings, and holidays. We spent eighteen Christmas eves together. She always had a nice meal, a box of various kinds of wonderful cookies, and a gift for everyone.

Although my relationship with Nan and Dan is an exceptional example of what the Host Family program can represent, even the minimum interaction can transform the experience a foreign student has of life in America. The host can also benefit. As Phyllis Meagher, a local volunteer said in a recent newsletter: "From my perspective, I was looking forward to meeting someone from another culture, widening my own outlook, maintaining an international connection, and also getting some contact with the ‘younger generation.’" The programs are always looking for new volunteers. In fact, it is very rare to have enough volunteers to match the large number of international students interested in these programs. According to Luisette Behmer, coordinator of the Host Family program, Washington University currently has 136 matched students and local volunteers in the Host Family program, and 139 matched students and volunteers in the Speak English With Us program. In case you are interested, there is still one international student awaiting a Host Family volunteer, and nine students waiting for a Speak English With Us volunteer.

In 1986, Nan and Dan visited me in Beijing. I was only too happy to be their ‘host’ in my country. I took them from Beijing to Shanghai, Xian, Guiling, Guangzhou, and then back to Hong Kong. They enjoyed all the cities, the different landscapes, temples, gardens, and foods from northern China to southern China. They reached the Great Wall. That was the first time they met my parents, becoming part of my family in China. In 2000, after Nan was already sick, she and Dan went back to visit China again. It was only a one-week trip, and they visited only Beijing, but I was able to arrange my own travel plans that year to meet them there. The trip was tiring for Nan, but I could see the happiness in her face when she sat in my parent’s home. The international family circle was completed. Although no line will ever officially connect me to any of those branches Nan lovingly traced of her ‘family tree’ diagram, I will always feel that Nan grafted me to her family. She treated me as an adopted daughter, and I will always remember her as my adopted mother.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director
The Center for the Humanities

"Lock everything in your car except your car key and a picture ID." These instructions given by prison authorities as a condition of attending "Hamlet" made it clear that this would not be just another night at the theater. The performance by inmate/actors at the Missouri Eastern Correctional was thanks to the work of Prison Performing Arts.

Prison Performing Arts (PPA) is pretty much what its name suggests. It is a multi-disciplinary, literacy and performing arts program that serves incarcerated adults and young people in the St. Louis area and in medium and high security state men’s prisons at Pacific and Bowling Green and the women’s prison at Vandalia. Its programs bring professional performances of music, dance, storytelling, circus and theater to St. Louis area correctional facilities, and to state prisons where inmates study and perform Shakespeare and Greek classic plays.

I attended my first PPA performance two years ago. A guard scanned me with a metal detector, took my ID, and buzzed me through two heavy metal doors into a large room with folding chairs. The inmate actors greeted each of us and thanked us for coming. Then we sat for an hour, riveted to the action. Some of the most intense emotion came from the post-show question and answer session and in the socializing that followed the performance.

Even though PPA’s activities are a far cry from my professional interest (trying to figure out whether enzymes interact in metabolic pathways), I was so impressed with what PPA was doing that I gladly accepted an invitation to join its board. Fifty-five years ago I dreamed of a radical restructuring of society. I couldn’t make this happen. But I can try to leave the world a little better place than I found it, at least for a few people. In this context, PPA’s work with people who, for the most part, have been relegated to society’s scrap heap seemed eminently worth being part of.

One of the great joys of joining the PPA board has been working with Artistic Director Agnes Wilcox, who teaches acting here at Washington University. Her energy and commitment to both people and theater infuses everything she does. Her dedication was obvious in PPA’s production of all five acts of "Hamlet," performed over 2 ½ years at the then high security Missouri Eastern Correctional Center at Pacific near Six Flags. Inmates played all of the male roles. PPA hired two professionals for the female parts. Faculty from Washington, Webster and Fontbonne Universities led seminars and sparked spirited discussions. Inmates who qualified earned 2 units of college credit from Fontbonne University. Agnes made it hard on the guys. Class met on Monday evenings. That meant missing Monday Night Football, a big event in a prison. That is one way to select for men who want to try something different.

Ira Glass’ NPR show, This American Life, superbly captured the spirit of PPA. (Ask me for a copy of the CD.) One inmate interview included the following: "My name is Danny Waller. I’m 44. The character I play is the ghost of Hamlet’s father. …when I first read the script, the words just jumped out at me. They made me feel things I had not felt before." (After a moment of hesitation.) "I took a man’s life. And, uh, I felt he was talking to me through (the words), that he wanted me to know what I had put him through: ‘I am thy father’s spirit/ Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night/And, for the day, confined to fast in fires/ Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/ Are burnt and purged away.’" An inmate serving time for second-degree murder brings something special to the interpretation. As do the other actors. Despite having seen numerous famous productions, Jack Hitt, who produced and narrated the show, said: "I learned that I didn’t know anything about Hamlet."

"The Hamlet Project" was followed by "The Oedipus Project," including "The Gospel at Colonus," an adaptation of "Oedipus." The inmate musicians were fabulous. The women in Vandalia are currently working on "Macbeth." The men at Pacific are rehearsing "Othello."

PPA also arranges performance and discussions of theatre. Gerald Early led a discussion following a performance at the City Workhouse of "Prelude to a Kiss." He told me that the prisoners "responded enthusiastically to the play and talked about it very insightfully....(Their) reading of the play reminded me how privileged and sheltered many of our students are…"

In addition, PPA is great at responding to opportunities. For example, when the well-known Brazilian pianist, Flavio Verani, was in town for a Premiere Performances concert at the Sheldon, we worked with the sponsors to bring him to the St. Louis Juvenile Detention Center. Virani started with a raucous Villalobos lots of big sound with both hands pounding the ivories. From my vantage point, it was hard to tell how the young audience was responding. But I could see one young man who was just too cool to let his face show any interest. Then I looked down. He was playing right along on his lap.

A special bonus has been the chance to get to know some of the inmates after their return to the community. I picked up M. for lunch, a few days after he was released on parole. I got in the car, buckled up my seat belt and waited for him to do the same. He sat there wondering what I was waiting for. Then he laughed. "I guess they had these things when I last had a car. But nobody used them." It struck me fully, perhaps for the first time, that a whole lot of days had gone by between then and now. What an overwhelming set of new things he was experiencing. One of the things he said that day was, "When I was a criminal, I didn’t care about anyone but myself." I don’t know how often it happens, but 17 years later, he came out a truly caring person. M. says that his participation in "The Hamlet Project" helped broaden his view.

We want the creative community to know about Prison Performing Arts. We hope you will be able to see a performance and will consider adding Prison Performing Arts to your annual philanthropic giving. We are not yet certain how much the program contributes to changing the world-view of incarcerated participants. (We will have a better answer to that question when a recent George Warren Brown graduate completes a formal evaluation of our program.) But there is no doubt it has had a major impact on me.

Danny Kohl is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Washington University. He is Vice-President of the Board of Directors, Prison Performing Arts.

Novelist and poet Qiu Xiaolong will be the last visiting writer in the Center for the Humanities’ The SmartSet Series: Where Great Writers Read this semester. Mr. Qiu will read from his work on Monday, April 19, at 8pm in Room 204 of Anheuser-Busch Hall (Law School) on the WU Hilltop Campus. He will give a seminar with time for audience questions on Tuesday, April 20, at 4pm in McMillan Cafe (Room 115), Old McMillan Hall, also on the WU Hilltop campus.

Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai, China. He published prize-winning poetry, translation and criticisms in Chinese in the 1980s and became a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association. In 1988, he came to the United States, started writing in English, and obtained a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Washington University. He is the author of two prize-winning novels (Death of a Red Heroine, 2000, and A Loyal Character Dancer, 2002), a poetry translation (Treasury of Chinese Love Poems, 2003), and a poetry collection (Lines Around China, 2003). His new novel, When Red Is Black, and a poetry translation, Poems from the Tang Dynasty, will come out in 2004. Mr. Qiu lives in St. Louis.

Both events are free and open to the public. A reception and book-signing will follow each event. For more information, call (314)935-5576.