AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Reading is one of the few ways people in prison can connect to the outside world, but access to books is limited. As Connecticut Public Radio's Kevin Chang Barnum reports, one nonprofit is trying to change that.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOOD BEING SANDED)
KEVIN CHANG BARNUM, BYLINE: At the Freedom Reads headquarters in Hamden Connecticut, Michael Byrd and a coworker are standing at their workstations. They're sanding thin slabs of wood, the first step in building a bookcase. These bookcases will later be brought to prisons and filled with books. Like many of Freedom Reads' employees, Byrd has served time in prison.
MICHAEL BYRD: I'm doing a lot of things that I never thought I could do. First of all, I'm making furniture that's beautiful. I never worked with wood before.
BARNUM: The bookcases are made of maple, oak, walnut or cherry. The smell of wood brings nature into prisons that are often metal and concrete. James Flynn is the other craftsman there. He went to prison when he was 20 and spent more than 30 years incarcerated. Back then, he felt like the world didn't recognize his humanity.
JAMES FLYNN: I've been stocked on a shelf in Amazon. I'm just a serial number.
BARNUM: Books helped Flynn connect with other people. He read a wide range of genres.
FLYNN: You know, I don't know how to be a husband, so I'll grab the Harlequin romances, and I'll read them.
BARNUM: Byrd is with the Freedom Reads team at York Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Niantic, Connecticut. They're in the gym for a poetry reading. Flynn and a couple others are setting up bookcases in another room. When the bookcases are set up in a prison, they're called Freedom Libraries. Today's agenda, open the 500th Freedom Library.
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REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS: All right, yo, thank y'all for coming.
BARNUM: Poet and Freedom Reads founder Reginald Dwayne Betts addresses the crowd without a podium. He's holding his latest book.
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BETTS: And I have to tell you that I once lived in a prison, too.
BARNUM: There are well over 100 people watching, standing room only. Almost everyone is dressed in a maroon shirt and blue pants, and they all have copies of Betts' book. They're looking down as they follow along, stopping Betts when he forgets to tell them the page number.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Page?
BETTS: Page 78. You see how I got a bad memory. You know what I mean?
BARNUM: After the reading, some of the attendees move to a common room in a prison housing unit for the library opening. People who live there will be able to visit it every day. In the unit, the bookcases are set up but still empty. On the wall is a mural featuring a blooming tree and butterflies. Reaching towards one yellow butterfly is a pair of hands. The hands are emerging from a book while breaking free from handcuffs. The mural was painted by people incarcerated at York, including Petra Rivera.
PETRA RIVERA: This is more of a gift to me than you guys can possibly imagine to be a part of this, to be a part of this history, to be able to honor such an amazing movement.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: All right. Let's load up the books.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Let's do it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: All right.
BARNUM: Everyone eagerly crowds the bookcases, opening cardboard boxes and shelving books.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: We'll have some of the folks in the back come in and shelve.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Yeah, go ahead guys.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Yeah.
BARNUM: When they finish shelving, Abigail Wood and other incarcerated folks mingle with Freedom Reads employees like David Perez DeHoyos.
DAVID PEREZ DEHOYOS: When I was locked up, I read 143 books, but there's probably, like, five that I still remember, like, holy - where I'm like, oh, they changed me.
ABIGAIL WOOD: I'm at 617 right now.
DEHOYOS: OK.
BARNUM: At one point, someone mentions how nice it is to have something that wasn't built by the state, because in addition to the books, Freedom Reads is also about showing incarcerated people that they are seen, that people who finished their sentences came back into a prison and brought a piece of the outside world.
For NPR News, I'm Kevin Chang Barnum in Connecticut.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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