Our Third Pushcart pick
We are delighted to bestow our first Pushcart nomination in nonfiction upon Nik de Dominic for his essay “On Teaching in the Staton Correctional Facility, Elmore, AL.” Born and raised in Los Angeles, de Dominic now lives and writes in New Orleans, where he is an editor for The Offending Adam online literary journal. He holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where he taught Creative Writing, Early American Literature, and Composition. As a fellow with the Alabama Prison Art + Education Project, he also taught poetry to inmates.
In “On Teaching in the Staton Correctional Facility, Elmore, AL,” de Dominic manages to swirl — tornado-like — glimpses of his father, the musical contents of his iPod, and his interaction with his incarcerated students into a narrative that, like poetry, creates a resonance between otherwise disparate images. Tornadoes, scratched eyeglass lenses, an iPod on shuffle mode, the invasive pink tendrils of a bougainvillea plant, the mysterious hierarchy within a prison culture, a headache. These images weave together, permitting the author to layer distortion upon distortion, clearing the way for entirely new perspectives.
My iPod is on shuffle, and for some reason, I refuse to think there’s anything random about the selection.
Like that of his nefarious iPod, de Dominic’s selection is deliberate, and the effect as mesmerizing as a flickering candle in a dark room.