The Gift of Reading

This is the season for lots of things – for gorging on gingerbread houses, for reciting Love Actually from memory, and for waiting impatiently in endless TSA queues (my life right now). And, of course, it’s also the season for binge-reading – for gleefully tearing wrapping paper off stacks of book-shaped packages and then stealing away to the nearest comfy couch, bookmark at the ready.

But beyond being the best time of year for selfishly slipping away for days on end of reading, it’s also the season for giving. And this year, I wanted to give in the spirit of this site. So I chose a book-centric cause that I care about – reading programs for prisoners – and roamed to two places that mean something to me – New York and Toronto – to donate to a deserving non-profit in each city.

So why prisoner reading programs? A few years ago, I worked on a pro-bono ad campaign for Book Clubs for Inmates – one of the two organizations on my giving list this year – and learned how poorly supplied many prison libraries in Canada are. These libraries are often short on stock, and the stock they do have tends to be out-of-date, low-quality, and stripped of radical literature. In the US, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate and a prison population with a much lower literacy rate than the general population, the situation is even worse. Prisons are isolating by design, and I came to see how a lack of access to reading material compounds that isolation by denying inmates a means of exploration, understanding, and self-improvement.

But, more than anything else, I chose this cause because I believe in the transformative power of reading. Intellectually, I’m interested in investing in literature’s ability to change even the most difficult lives. Emotionally, meanwhile, I just want to pass on some of the pleasure that books have given me.

My first charity, Book Clubs for Inmates, organizes volunteer-run book clubs in 28 prisons across Canada, with the goal of expanding to every federal penitentiary in the country. The Club’s reading list is incredible – including favorites of mine like Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and George Orwell’s 1984.

The book clubs offer myriad benefits, many of them practical – members strengthen their aptitude, anger management, and ability to empathize with others  – all of which make prisoners better equipped to return to their communities some day. But, as I learned working with the organization’s founder, Carol Finlay, there are several cerebral benefits too. While it’s impossible for inmates to roam the world physically, the book clubs enable at least their minds to travel – exposing prisoners to new places, situations, and ways of thinking.

My second charity, meanwhile, is NYC-based NYC Books Through Bars, a volunteer-run collective that sends books to prisoners across the country. In its 20 years, the organization has mailed more than 50,000 packages of books to inmates in state and federal facilities. Books Through Bars takes requests directly from prisoners, so its online wish list – created in partnership with Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn – reflects the interests of its community of readers. It’s a moving list – implying a deep well of frustration, an interest in identity, and a simple desire for diversion. Here’s what I bought for them from the list:

• The Classroom and the Cell, a collection of conversations between public intellectual Marc Lamont Hill and political prisoner, journalist, and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Are Prisons Obsolete?, activist Angela Davis’ call for the abolition of the American prison system
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which tracks Malcolm’s journey from troubled kid to self-styled “angriest black man in America” to Islamic convert
• Black Elk Speaks, the life story of a famed medicine man of the Lakota Sioux tribe
• The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction, an overview of Aztec culture, art, trade, and warfare

Here’s hoping that prisoners both north and south of the border will be able to derive as much happiness from holiday reading this year as I do. I’d love to hear what you’re giving this year, and what you’ll be reading over the holidays – reach out in the comments section.