Books Through Bars - by Dave Mac Marquis & Moira Marquis (Paperback)

About the Book

"Co-edited by two activists with deep experience in organizing prison books programs (PBPs), Books Behind Bars introduces readers to PBPs and their decentralized organization. PBPs are a grassroots-level and nationwide activist movement challenging the largest prison industry in the world by refusing to let incarcerated people remain isolated and forgotten. Operating on shoestring budgets, will all-volunteer workforces and donated libraries, books to prisoner programs are examples of ordinary people acting to undermine the isolation and judgment of incarceration. Although there are currently fifty-three books to prisoners groups serving in all fifty states, these programs remain relatively unknown. The goal of this book is to bring awareness to this diffuse and long-standing social movement and offer readers a way to get involved. In addition to highlighting voices from PBPs throughout the United States, the volume also includes essays, images, and artwork from independent bookstore owners, formerly and currently incarcerated folks, activists, artists, journalists, volunteers, organizers, and scholars"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

As many states move to restrict books in carceral spaces, educators and activists must continue to advocate for the life-giving and healing power that books can provide in those spaces. Books through Bars offers narrative evidence for why this work must be done. It will benefit anyone who has been incarcerated, who seeks to bring education to carceral spaces, or who wants to dismantle mass incarceration in the US. This excellent book belongs in the library of every prison education program in the US--assuming officials will approve it.--M. M. Veeneman "CHOICE"

Books through Bars powerfully conveys an important public statement about the importance of books and their value to maintaining one's full humanity through the life of the mind.--Doran Larson "author of Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration"

About the Author

MOIRA MARQUIS manages the Freewrite Project based in PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing program. She has worked with Asheville Prison Books, the Prison Books Collective in Carrboro, North Carolina, and cofounded Saxapahaw Prison Books. Shehas taught history and literature in secondary and higher education. Her academic writing has appeared in Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Science Fiction Studies, and Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. She is the author of the PEN America report on carceral censorship, "Reading Between the Bars," and her popular writing can be found in LitHub, TruthOut and PEN America's Works of Justice series.

DAVE "MAC" MARQUIS is a lifelong activist. He has worked with the Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, Earth First!, the Asheville Global Report, and innumerable other organizations, small and large. He has volunteered at several prison books programs and helped establish Asheville Prison Books as well as Saxapahaw Prison Books. Mac is the book review editor for H-Labor, the executive assistant for the Labor and Working-Class History Association, and a former board member of the Southern Labor Studies Association. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of South Carolina and has a graphic history of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in production with the Historic New Orleans Collection.