Books through Bars
Stories from the Prison Books Movement
Title Details
Pages: 280
Illustrations: 75 b&w and color
Trim size: 7.500in x 9.500in
Formats
Paperback
Pub Date: 03/15/2024
ISBN: 9-780-8203-6587-9
List Price: $37.95
Subsidies and Partnerships
Published with the generous support of Sarah Mills Hodge Fund
Related Subjects
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Privacy & Surveillance (see also POLITICAL SCIENCE / Privacy & Surveillance)
Books through Bars
Stories from the Prison Books Movement
How prison books programs are quietly challenging the largest prison industry in the world
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- Description
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- Contributors
People organizing prison books programs have quietly gathered in basements, storage spaces, and the back rooms of secondhand bookstores for the last seventy years, reading letters written by incarcerated people and sending books in return. This diffuse and nonhierarchical movement operates on shoestring budgets with donated libraries in thirty states, and yet, there is little awareness of this long-standing social movement.
This book contains essays that explain the need for prison book programs and offer advice on how to establish or become involved with prison books programs, as well as shedding light on current challenges. While mass incarceration can make people feel powerless, this book details how ordinary people can organize and intervene in the largest imprisonment the world has ever known. The editors of this book hope it will inspire more people to realize that everyone has the power to treat each other differently and to foster a culture of care over cruelty.
Royalties from the sale of this book will go to the Martin Sostre Memorial Prison Books Fund which grants money to prison book programs that send free literature to incarcerated people annually. Martin Sostre won several foundational prison censorship lawsuits while incarcerated and opened the door to sending books inside.
—Doran Larson, author of Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration
Victoria Law
Michelle Dillon
Melissa Charenko
Beth Orlansky
Robert McDuff
Rebecca Ginsburg
James King
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Sarah West
Lauren Braun-Strumfels
Annie Masaoka
Ellen Skirvin
Andy Chan
Jodi Lincoln
Patrick Kukucka
Daniel McGowan
Julie Schneyer
Julia Chin
Kwaneta Harris
Valerie Surrett
Rod Coronado
Nic Cassette
Zoe Lawrence
Megan Sweeney
Paul Tardie