Banned Books Week is the perfect time to talk about censorship. Incarcerated people face the most highly censored reading lists in the United States. This censorship goes beyond listing books and material to be banned, it stretches all the way to the complete denial of all books.
Asheville Prison Books has been sending free books inside for over 25 years. Since 1999 we have sent tens of thousands of books to people on the inside. Many of those people had no other means of obtaining a book.
Help break the isolation! Remind folks on the inside, in a country imprisons its people at a higher than any other country in the world, that they are not forgotten.
Buy A Book From One of Our Wishlists And We Not Only Receive The Book, We also receive a matching cash donation. your $30 spent on books gets us $60 total.
Click here to reach our Firestorm Books wish list.
Click here to reach our Malaprop’s Bookstore wish list.
Click here to reach our Bigfoot Books and Brews list.
This poem was written by Thomas Neeley, a participant in our book club. Thomas is looking for a pen pal, so check out his info below to write to him!
Poem (Untitled)
If I was made out of gold or platinum Would I be treated precious and rare
Or would I just be considered a burden to bear I hope that you will always care.
Maybe people would think I had more worth and merit If my body and soul were converted to carats… Or would other people still try to attack me Or would they lose me and discard me…
This corrupt world could care less if we perish While platinum, gold and diamonds are adored and cherished… How is it that a mere stone glistening and gleaming Holds more value and admiration to people than us as human beings…
It’s sad that the highest praise and value can be Placed on an object with no soul and so small While our precious life seem to hold To this destructive world, absolutely no value at all!!! 🙂
11/30/20 UPDATE: Sheriff says books ARE still allowed at the jail as long as they come from “legitimate” distributors or publishers, and that there was never a plan to ban books at the facility.
This is good news for the folks at the jail, and we’ll be trying to get on that “legitimate” distributor list (it’s absurd that facilities are still citing long-discredited narratives about contraband when they have never been able to point to ONE single instance of contraband coming in through a book sent by our organization, but we’ll just have to keep swatting down these ridiculous justifications…)
The fact that we were initially given incorrect information by jail staff which then had to be clarified by the Sheriff, is a reminder that often all it takes for incarcerated folks to lose access to books is a misinformed or vindictive mail room employee who decides to implement their own version of a policy whenever they feel like it. Now that won’t happen here and if it does, we’ll be able to resolve it quickly.
When book access is restricted or cut off, a swift and strong response from our community is assured.
When we fight, we win yall!
Original Post – 11/25/20
Asheville Prison Books recently learned that Onslow County Jail in Jacksonville, NC is planning to ban ALL books except Bibles and Qurans in conjunction with a plan to roll out tablets, which prisoners will have to pay for.
The exclusion of other religious books is blatant religious discrimination, but even more harmful is the blanket censorship this policy would impose across all categories of reading material. The tablet program would deprive pre-trial prisoners of legal resources, and all people confined at the jail of all sorts of written resources.
But these days, jails and prisons have started moving toward these blanket bans of all physical books. For many reasons, digital content on tablets and other devices is an unacceptable substitute for free, diverse reading material.
The goal is censorship
Earlier this month, Onslow County jail rejected and returned a package of books we had sent to someone there. When we called to ask why, they told us that not only does the jail only accepts books from certain vendors such as Amazon, but that we should not bother trying to get on the approved vendor list because the jail would soon be banning all books as they begin to sell tablets to prisoners.
Jail staff we spoke with openly acknowledged that censorship was a primary goal of the shift to tablets: “We only want it to be the books that we want to go in, so we don’t have to look through the NC ban list,” one staff member said, referencing the list of hundreds of books banned in NC state prisons.
This banned book list contains many books by and about black, queer, and other marginalized people. A few notable entries on the list include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King, and Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars by Clifton Collins, and Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez.
While prisons and jails already engage in an egregious level of censorship, switching to tablets introduces a new, draconian level of censorship as prisoners are limited to accessing a very small selection of authorized titles available on the tablet.
Tablets aren’t necessarily a bad thing—prisoners may want to purchase them, and may benefit from some of the content they provide—but the trend of banning free resources in favor of predatory, for-profit, devices can’t be allowed to continue. Simply put, people who want books should be able to continue to receive them.
Currently, 72% of the population in custody at the Onslow County jail arepre-trial, meaning they haven’t been convicted of a crime but can’t make bail. Prisoners who can’t make bail likely also can’t pay for a tablet. Â And while the majority of the letters we receive from jails include requests for legal resources, tablets typically do not include these kinds of materials.
Banning books also cuts prisoners off from important outside connections. Many prisoners who are isolated and have no support from family or friends write to us not only to request books, but to have some connection outside the prison walls—sending their art, poetry, and thoughts to someone who cares.
We read every letter sent to us, and hand-select books to send back. This connection is one of the reasons we do the work of sending free books to people inside; and when people receive these books, they are reminded that someone reached back through the bars to put something in their outstretched hand.
What’s at stake
Tablet programs are spreading in popularity with corrections administrations nationwide because they make censorship efficient and provide an opportunity for major giveaways to prison profiteers capitalizing on a literally captive market.
For people trapped inside jails and prisons, the outcome of such programs include escalating levels of deprivation, isolation, and desperation, as people find themselves cut off from the already-meager resources they depend on.
This is unconscionable in the context of America’s notoriously cruel, bloated and racist carceral system – and it is particularly appalling in the context of the covid19 pandemic, which has exacerbated suffering behind bars to an almost unimaginable degree.
We should be emptying our jails of people, not books.
Stay tuned to hear about how you can help stop the ban! #NoBookBanNC
“In the era of prison profiteers like JPay, we’re potentially seeing the dawn of a new era of prison censorship.”
On Saturday, September 28, Asheville Prison Books will partner with Firestorm Books & Coffee to celebrate National Banned Books Week (Sept. 22-28).
Between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on that day, our collective will be tabling with information about our project and about the largest book ban in the country, which is taking place right now in prisons across every state. Firestorm will also match purchases of banned or “challenged” books with a donation of a second copy of the book to our project!
According to Firestorm Collective member Libertie Valance, “If you think that book banning is just the stuff of a parochial past or a dystopian future, you’re mistaken. Right now, tens of thousands of North Carolinians are being arbitrarily prevented from accessing reading material.”
Valance noted that North Carolina prison system, like other state and federal systems, maintains a banned books list. In 2018 the ACLU called that list—which included The New Jim Crow, an award-winning book by Michelle Alexander about mass incarceration dependent on discrimination against African-Americans—“shameful,” “wrong,” and “unconstitutional.” At that time, restricted titles included I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Stand by Stephen King, and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves by Laura Erickson-Schroth.
According to Asheville Prison Books organizer Julie Schneyer, prison censorship is only getting worse due to trends that make banning books not only easier but more profitable. “In the era of prison profiteers like JPay, we’re potentially seeing the dawn of a new era of prison censorship,” Schneyer noted. “For-profit companies are making big money by using the promise of tech-enabled education to sell e-readers and tablets to incarcerated people. But these devices only carry DOC-sanctioned content, which makes it much easier for DOCs to quietly ban books.”
Even more concerning, she says, is that DOCs frequently use the availability of these new devices to justify banning books-to-prisons programs like hers from sending in free, physical books at all. “It’s a lose-lose,” she says. “The DOCs engage in de facto book banning through these devices they control, and then they put blanket bans on projects like ours from operating. The result is that people’s access to content is curtailed, and prison profiteers get rich selling content we could provide for free.”
APB office, back of Downtown Books & News, 67 N. Lexington Avenue
Attend this volunteer trainining to learn how to fulfill requests for books!
People locked up across NC and SC need books of all kind: history, health, language study, politics, fiction and poetry, and more. Folks depend on these books for so many reasons: to pass the time, to stay focused and make progress on their personal and educational goals, and often just to escape the despair and trauma of being incarcerated.
Volunteers will open letters from people requesting books and learn how to locate appropriate selections in our small library of donated books.
Transform your old hardcovers into sneaky storage–because the best secrets are hidden in plain sight.
Sunday, August 11 @ 3-5pm
Firestorm Books & Coffee
Hollow books have a rich history of being used to store items that require a bit more…discretion. And more than once they’ve been used to smuggle items into prisons to aid escape or access to contraband–not just in the movies, but in real life too.
But how does a hollow book actually become hollow? Attend this workshop to find out, and to get in on the action!
In The Matrix, Neo finds a disk hidden in a hollowed out copy of the book “Simulacra and Simulation.”
Book used by the Red Army Faction to smuggle a pistol into Stammheim Prison
WHAT THIS WORKSHOP COVERS
A bit of history, and a lot of fun
Each step in the process of creating a hollow book via live demonstration and presentation
Hands-on experience hollowing out a book (see below for details)
Ideas for how to take your hollow book project to the next level with decoration, closures, and more!
COST, MATERIALS, ETC.
This workshop is suggested donation/pay-what-you-want with no one turned away. Every dollar we make goes to supporting our collective’s work sending books to incarcerated folks in our region!
Materials will be provided for live demonstration and hands on practice–but we’ll keep all of the books that are ours, so if you want something to take home with you, BYOB(ook)!
SINCE WE’LL BE DEMONSTRATING A SEQUENTIAL PROCESS, PLEASE DO YOUR BEST TO COME ON TIME! 🙂
Asheville Prison Books wants to facilitate a correspondence reading group with people who are in prison. The general plan is to select and source a book, figure out who will participate in this group, send them copies of the book, solicit their feedback on the reading, and then publish their material in a journal that we could then send back in to everyone who was involved in the reading group. We’ve never done this before, so we’re excited to hear peoples’ ideas. You do not need to be involved in Asheville Prison Books already to attend this meeting.
The meeting will be this Saturday (June 8th) at Firestorm Books & Coffee at 2:00PM.
The books we’ve selected is “Fire on the Mountain” by Terry Bisson, which is “an alternate history describing the world as it would have been had John Brown succeeded in his raid on Harper’s Ferry and touched off a slave rebellion in 1859, as he intended.”
April 27 @7-11pm – Special solo show w/ guitarist Ben Phan followed by UpCountry Brewery favorite Jarvis Jenkins! $5-10 suggested, no one turned away!
Saturday, April 27, 2019 @ 7-11 PM
$5-$10 suggested donation
UpCountry Brewing Company (1042 Haywood Road)
Join members of our project for a fabulous double bill with some of Asheville’s most talented musicians and some of Asheville’s most delicious beer!
7-9pm – Special solo show with guitarist Ben Phan 9-11pm – Brewery favorite Jarvis Jenkins
Please bring a paperback book or two to donate (may be used!); urban fiction, mystery/thriller, educational/trade books and dictionaries especially appreciated!
Catawba Brewing is releasing a new habenero mole porter this Thursday and $1 from each glass will be going to Asheville Prison Books! We’ll have a table at Catawba’s South Slope Tasting Room & Brewery at 32 Banks Avenue on Thursday evening (December 6th) if you want to stop by and say hi!
When you’ve amassed a personal library of hundreds of books over a lifetime, the tough process of passing those loved volumes on starts with the question: where should they end up?
When faced with this question, Orlando-based writer Mark I. Pinsky reached out to Asheville Prison Books. He chose our project because of his abiding connection to western North Carolina, and because he views prisons as one of the last places in the country where a deep engagement with books and reading continues to flourish.
In addition to pledging a donation of dozens (possibly as many as 100+) books, Pinksy also interviewed a volunteer about the work we do, and published the article in the Washington Independent Review of Books. The article below is excerpted with permission from the author. To read the original publication click here.
Letting Go, Setting Free
By Mark I. Pinksy August 24, 2018
Asheville Prison Books
For those of us of a certain age who have been regular or occasional reviewers or just book lovers, the sight of groaning shelves throughout the house can be troubling. It’s time to thin them out so they won’t be a burden to our kids — or get wasted at postmortem yard sales.
The brutal truth is that these hundreds of hardcovers and paperbacks, as much as they are beloved, need a new home, a place where they will be read by many — and equally loved. And a destination where the donation will not undermine royalties of fellow authors.
As we know, there aren’t many such places left, except for U.S. jails and prisons. In the United States, there are more than 2 million inmates serving time in federal, state, and county facilities.
Organizations like Asheville Prison Books (APB) have sprung up around the country. APB covers North and South Carolina prisons and gets 50-100 inmate requests a month. In the Southeast, Florida has its own affiliate in Pensacola, but Georgia does not. There are several national organizations for inmates from other states, where APB sends requests from outside the Carolinas.
Like many, APB is a shoestring operation, working out of Asheville’s Downtown Books & News and staffed entirely by volunteers.
The nonprofit collective was established in 1999. I chose to give my surplus books to APB because I like that part of the country, and one of my nonfiction books takes place in the area. So, on a late August trip to western North Carolina, I paid them a visit.
On a Saturday morning, I meet one of the volunteers. Their jerry-built office at the back is a cramped, donated 8’x10’ area — two walls are bookshelves — in the back of [Downtown Books and News], which sells used books and a wide array of periodicals. The volunteer calls [the bookstore’s] staff “allies of the program.”
The program, she explains, was a response to the dearth of prison-funded literacy and rehabilitation programs, which coincided with the explosion in prison populations and the simultaneous reduction of resources.
“I think it’s great that people want to support Asheville Prison Books by donating books and money and time,” the volunteer says, largely “because they have severe criticism of mass incarceration.”
Donated paperbacks less than two inches thick, most used, but some new, are sent in parcels of two to inmates who request specific titles, authors, or subject areas. A rotating cast of six to eight volunteers fills the requests in the tiny office and sends them to a larger venue where more volunteers wrap them for shipment.
When the inmates finish the books, they pass them along to friends — since most institutions limit the number that can be kept in cells — so the majority ultimately end up in prison libraries.
The most popular titles are dictionaries (especially Spanish-English), vocational, and educational, including language instruction and study guides for the GED. Also, books by and for people of color.
There are restricted categories, too: porn and “incitement” — the latter of which can be interpreted broadly, if not capriciously, by prison authorities.
One once-banned title was The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. The ban was ended when the ACLU filed suit against the North Carolina prison system. When the title was allowed, a Christian community partner “Faith 4 Justice” purchased a number of new copies at cost from another bookstore around the corner from Broadway Books, Malaprop’s.
What the project needs most now, the volunteer says, is money to cover postage.
Back home in Orlando, the actual process of culling and shipping the books off to Asheville is turning out to be more emotional for me than I had imagined, entailing a certain amount of psychologically letting go.
As with many of life’s challenges and crises, I approach the culling in stages. So, I’m starting to fill boxes with books for people who will love them, too.
Orlando-based freelance writer Mark I. Pinsky is the author of five nonfiction books, most recently Met Her on the Mountain: A Forty-Year Quest to Solve the Appalachian Cold-Case Murder of Nancy Morgan (John Blair).
