So many people learned to love reading in prison. Malcolm Xis probably the most famous one. He got locked up after already being a good public speaker. But in prison he could feel his intellectual inferiority compared to the well read people in there. It made him want to learn how to read. He was studying the dictionary, reading with just a crack of light, plowing through all the non-fiction books he could find.
That's part of why I wanted to make a way for people to donate books to people who are locked up. I know there are a lot of readers there. I mean that is what most people who go to prison say--they picked up hood books or true crime and learned they could read a book in a day if that's all there was to do. And the truth is, you don't know how many people that book might impact once it gets inside a facility. Just a matter of getting it there.
Click here to buy a book for someone who's currently locked up in Newark NJ, and Ten Dollar Books will cover shipping and send it right to them.
-Rachel Wagner
Click here to shop all the prison abolition books on the site, including Malcolm X's autobiography.
