The library at South Central Correctional Facility, a Tennessee prison privately operated by CoreCivic, consists of a single wall of books. They’re mostly religious. Those of us incarcerated here are often not permitted to visit the library anyway, for a variety of reasons often related to understaffing. During the pandemic, a few of us recognized the need for an in-house library for our unit, so that during lockdowns people had access to books.
Staff did not object to our repurposing a hallway broom closet. Folks working maintenance built some shelves. The first donated books we placed on them were ours. But once I shared the news with Kay, a pen pal who mailed books to starving minds behind bars all over the country, she immediately set about making sure we had a broad selection.
To date, Kay has donated 302 books to our unit library, not including dozens of dictionaries anyone could keep for personal use. We call the library “Books by Kay.”
Monday through Thursday and on Saturday, from 8 am to 10 am, anyone in our unit can check out one book at a time from Luther, our librarian, who maintains a log of who has what. The closet is a small walk-in with just enough room for a chair, so Luther sits and passes out books to those who come by. We pay him $5 per week out of our eldercare fund, but he would have done it for free.
“I get to talk to folks I wouldn’t normally talk to, about something I love. Which is books. I’ve always loved books,” Luther told Filter. “These are precious gifts that some kind lady sent us, and we thank her by treating them like the treasures they are.”
He puts our reviews on index cards tucked behind the back cover, including how many stars we gave the book, to help him make recommendations.
Over time, Kay’s donations have inspired prisoners to donate many of their own books too. Today there are 400 to 500 books on the shelves, except for the bottom one where Luther keeps his paperwork.
I spent an entire year fighting to receive The New Jim Crow, after the mailroom rejected it for “promoting racial bias.”
Kay’s first prison pen pal was a woman she wrote to once a week for 20 years. Kay was working at a large independent book store in Seattle, so she sent her books all the time.
“The prison sadly became more restrictive as time wore on, but I sent hundreds and hundreds of books to her in that time and she gobbled them up like candy,” Kay told Filter. When she left the book business, she decided that instead of spending more money to buy books for herself, from then on she’d read books from the library and use the money to send book into prisons.
At this facility, the only books we’re allowed to order ourselves must come through approved vendors like Barnes & Noble, which is expensive and severely restricts the selection. But outside contacts are allowed to send us books from Amazon and other publishers, as long as they’re new copies shipped directly from the publisher.
I spent an entire year fighting to receive The New Jim Crow, which I’d ordered through the proper channels, after the mailroom rejected it for “promoting racial bias.” I had to escalate the grievances all the way up to the Tennessee Department of Correction commissioner.
Tennessee prisons are in the process of getting tablets, which many fear will be used to ban books entirely because we’ll be able to download electronic books, even though they’ll still be expensive and limited to a pre-approved selection. CoreCivic did not respond to Filter‘s inquiry about future restrictions or the decision-making process for rejecting titles.
“When my wife passed last year, I didn’t think I could go on,” Bennett, 72, told Filter. She was in a nursing home, and he had not seen her for eight years. “I got a book out of the closet called Living When a Loved One Has Died. It saved my life.”
I’ve been incarcerated close to three decades. Books have kept me sane. They have shown me other places. They have taught me new skills. They have allowed me to cry and laugh, and have occasionally protected me from shanks.
Living in prison means living in constant fear. There is no place or time or situation where we are safe from violence. And we have fewer and fewer outlets for the toll that takes on us emotionally. The brief escape of meeting new characters, getting lost in new worlds—this allows us to go on.
If you want to know what people in prisons are most desperate for, look at the books they’re trying to get.
My buddy Ryan used to ask me to read his daughter’s letters to him. He’d run away from abusive parents as a kid, and was mostly homeless before coming into the prison system in his twenties. After 18 years, he was too embarrassed to tell his daughter that he’d never really learned how to read.
A freeworld friend of mine is a retired teacher, so she mailed in some elementary school-level books designed for teaching students how to read. Before long, Ryan was reading his daughter’s letters himself, the way he’d always wanted to.
Over the years, and especially since the pandemic, prisons have quietly taken away the educational and recreational programming opportunities that are supposed to help rehabilitate us. In some facilities, including South Central, there are none at all. But we still have the desire to learn, to grow. Like other prisoners across the country who’ve been cut off from state-funded programming, we’ve worked to create it ourselves.
The types of books Kay sees most often on wish lists, and that Luther sees being checked out the most at the library, have an obvious theme.
If you want to know what people in prisons are most desperate for, look at the books they’re trying to get: Dictionaries. Almanacs. Self-help books. Books from the “For Dummies” series. Books about learning to draw. Books about learning to speak Spanish. Books about origami and chess.
The woman Kay sent books to for 20 years used them to tutor women around her who were studying for the GED. (She has since been released, and she and Kay remain in touch.)
Our crochet club owes Kay for sending us Crocheting in Plain English. Luther says there’s always a wait list for that one.
South Central stopped letting in used books earlier in 2024.
The warden here liked “Books by Kay” so much that he had closets in the other units similarly converted. But it’ll be harder and harder to stock them, because there are more and more restrictions on what books prisoners are allowed to receive.
“I am sad that there have been so many restrictions,” Kay said. “That it is no longer simple to write snail mail to people inside, and used book are banned in so many places.”
Early in the pandemic, Kay began mailing one used book each day to prisons that still allowed them. Something we all appreciate about Kay’s donations is that she always sent hardcover copies that were used, but in great condition. I’ve always loved used books. I’d flip through looking for notes written in the margins or passages that had been underlined. Someone else had already found the book worth picking up, but sometimes you could see when they had really read it.
South Central stopped letting in used books earlier in 2024. Many prisons across the country have done the same, claiming they’re being used to smuggle in contraband. It’s the same justification being used to restrict more and more forms of mail. Rejected books are often destroyed without either the sender or recipient being notified.
“There are over 45 organized books-to-prisoner programs. I wish I could send you more research material on this important subject but those damned mailroom rule[s] prevent this,” Kay said. “It makes my blood pressure rise every time I think of restricting words and education from those [who] crave more learning and have time to absorb it.”
I mourn for us, that we have lost the magnificence of used books. I mourn for the books, too. They have lost so many of the people who wanted to read them.
Photograph via Washington State Library