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Opinion | The Search for Beauty in a Prison Cell


To choose books, I think back to the nights I spent in the cell, enamored with Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” or pondering Toni Morrison’s “Paradise” or the “Black Poets” that have disappeared. How do I become a poet? I talked to dozens of others and listened to their memories of the books stay with them. Regarding the story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, one person said, “I have read sad stories and I have read a few more sad stories but none so sad as to give you such a headache. ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’” Because I am a sometimes upset lawyer, this made me pick it up and read it over and over and put it on our shelf.

The people I meet when I bring my books are mirror images of myself, be it the teenagers at Rikers or the gray-haired men in the Colorado prison, or the women who remind me of my mother right outside. Chicago. Some were incarcerated during the 17 years I was free, and many used literature to make a place for themselves and others in this world.

I recently entered the Louisiana State Prison with James Washington and Chris Spruill. Both have spent time in the prison they call “Cai”. James learned to work with wood there, learned to love turning a rough block of wood into something lovely. Over the past few months, he and Chris have put that experience into building the three libraries we bring with us. When we entered that wet place, the men greeted them with dap and love. “James, what are you doing back?” He brought beauty.

At Louisiana’s Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, an inmate named James Lavigne tell us what that means to him. “I tell you, everyone here reads. But usually what we read will be like urban novels,” he said. This is actual literature. On the shelf, he finds a memoir by Maya Angelou. “I mean clearly this woman went through experiences that normal people don’t have,” he said. “She went through things that most of us would never understand. We can really see into her soul through her work. Amazing.” And then he moved on to Jonathan Lethem’s “Motherless Brooklyn.” “It was a lot of fun. I was really impressed with his style.” It’s also one of my favorites.

We call them free libraries to remind us of the urgency of it all, and we carve bookshelves into curves to suggest a universe bent toward justice. I don’t believe that a single book can give a person wings, but the hope of all of that is not a pipe dream. The hope is that someone turns a page, and with the flip, transforms.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, attorney, and creator of Freedom Reads, an initiative to curate libraries and install them in prisons around the country.

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