December brings us three new books. Softie: Stories by Megan Howell and Indigenous Ecocinema: Decolonizing Media Environments by Salma Monani will each be the focus of an upcoming post.

Today’s featured title, This Book Is Free and Yours to Keep: Notes from the Appalachian Prison Book Project presents a collection of letters and artwork by people in prison that highlights the crucial work done by the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP), a nonprofit that provides books to incarcerated people in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland. Through the words of people directly impacted by the criminal punishment system, the collection provides uncommon insight into reading practices and everyday life in prisons and jails while being an inspiration for prison book projects, prison reform, and abolition.

Simultaneously communicating the vital importance of access to books and education, and conveying the power of community, the letters sent to APBP by incarcerated people spark conversations about racism, poverty, and incarceration and shed light on the movement for accountability for state violence. This Book Is Free and Yours to Keep elucidates the violence and neglect perpetuated by carceral systems and offers a way forward based on solidarity and collaboration.

The book has excerpts from letters along with essays and poetry from APBP book clubs and WVU classes in prison; reflections from volunteers; an introduction by project founder Katy Ryan; an afterword by Steven Lazar, a former student, now exonerated; and a preface composed in solitary confinement by Hugh Williams Jr.  

“If we could find a book on the sky for me, I would love it very much.” –writer from Tennessee

“I’m sorry I burdened you with my sadness. I’ll be fine. I’ll go watch my friend the spider outside my window. I call him Big Boy because he’s pretty big. He cheers me up.” –Wayne “Gator” Bates

“Then one day the guard opened my cell tray slot and said Underwood I got a book for you. I jumped up and there it was. I said darn they really did answer my request. To make a long boring letter short, I am now sitting in a cell getting ready to take a test dealing with my G.E.D.” –Underwood

“Education can free you in ways that you never fully realize until you are in a place that you crave and dream to be free of.” —Dorian La’More

“Last night mail call came to the pod as usual, but unlike most nights, my name was called to receive a package. It was from you at APBP. What many people don’t know is mail call and receiving packages is like Christmas. When you receive a book in the mail, the entire pod (regardless of the fact that we don’t all usually get along) suddenly comes together saying ‘Oh wow! What book did you get?’ or ‘I want to read that as soon as you’re done.'” –Sherry Lynn Martin

“Our prison library is a travesty, so when I finish these books I donate them to the library here.” —TN

“Books here are very limited and what good books the library gets usually get stolen (sad but true).” —MD

Reading poems by Adrienne Rich “was like learning I could mix red with blue to find various shades of purple.” –Celeste Monet Blair

“Even when it took a while those books showed up right on time.” –Alex-The-Wulff

“I read at a third-grade level when I went in, and because of books that were provided by APBP, I read over a thousand books prior to my release. I could not wait to get back to my cell and see what the next chapter held for me! I escaped prison every day and traveled with Tom Sawyer, Lewis and Clark, Dante, and I traveled with folks in the Canterbury Tales. Little by little I became immersed in literature, and I escaped the violence and hate that was prison and began to transform myself into something more than a number.” –Greg Whittington

“When the door’s locked; the guards have fed you, and all your freedom and dignity has been stripped the only thing left is your mind, the only thing they can never take from you. . . . When all is lost you find salvation in a book.” –Horace Nunley

“The power of a Good Book can open one’s eyes and mind. Can take you out of the place you are In. And put you in a Better place.” –David

“I feel like I’m helping shape the minds of a generation who may change the world. What I found puzzling is I did not know how institutionalized I was until the WVU students brought life into our classroom. The students are helping remove the institutional stigmas that are associated with prison life. And we’re learning together how to break those institutional structures society has made us believe were right.” —Derrick

“The only true way forward in this maze of ‘rehabilitation’ is for both sides to understand each other. The only way to understand each other is to interact—you can’t interact if the doors to the prison and your heart are closed.” —Rudy 

“These materials help me tutor men here at the prison, so anything you send goes towards the development of a group of men.” —TN

“I like to imagine the person reading the book. I like to believe the books are connecting us, a bridge between me and someone I have never met but would like to know.” —Corina Scott

I applied for a library privilege, and I began to read. I read a lot of legal fiction, some true crime, a ton of novels, but the reading left a lot to be desired. I wanted to learn more about people like myself, who wound up in situations such as the one I’m currently in, and what I could do to never wind up in this position ever again. —Lee

“I am frequently asked how I have been able to tolerate decades of oppressive enslavement. Invariably, my response is that I refuse to put my mind in a cage and I read a great deal. APBP plays a starring role for many of us who are expanding our horizons by reading.” —Jake

“The only sane way to respond to love like this is to make it count.” –Craig Elias