Stephen King
The “King” of word-painting but kind of unnerving content.
CS Lewis
The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia – excellent.
Kahlil Gibran
Author of ‘The Prophet’ and many others unknown to us.
Try an old bookstore for original text too rather than revisions.
Eduardo Galeano
‘Book of Embraces’ the closest thing to my style of writing I have found.
A little more about me
Okay, now that I’ve shared those writers that I am inspired by most, I was thinking I would write a blurb regarding my discovery of how I was discovered long ago in India, and accidentally stumbled upon a poem of mine written under my old name of ‘Damiano’.
I am in regular contact now with these friends and advocates who recently broadly publicized one of my poems, which they have referred to as being like a “national anthem” for them. It is called “Institution” and was put on a poster at the UN Convention in NY recently.
I continue to send them material which interests them, mostly in the category of human rights and protection of the disabled and poor people over there. They can totally relate to my ‘Institution’ poem which is ironic because this is the USA and that is India! Do we have something in common here regarding the oppression of those we put into institutions and jails when they need “help” and are not violent criminals by any means? I bet we have more NON-violent offenders locked up, AND mixed in, with violent criminals.
It seems there has been research done on this, and my personal experience, both as a child and young woman, behind the walls in this country is that this is quite accurate. So, you see, the torture at Guantanamo was no surprise to me. It’s really nothing new, it’s just not talked about or allowed to be exposed by those in power.
My poetry from the earlier years reflects this horrible oppression and victimization as a child in the care of the State of New Hampshire. My horror stories would not be believed or accepted. That’s why I wrote poetry even when I was forbade to do so. I continued at great risk, and hid it in a ceiling for over a year when I was only 15 years old in the Elan Program.