Inside a workshop in Hamden, Connecticut, Michael Byrd and a co-worker are standing at their workstations. They’re sanding thin slabs of wood — the first step in building a bookcase.
These bookcases will be delivered to prisons across the country and filled with books.
Like many of the people who work here, Byrd has served time in prison.
He works with Freedom Reads, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that launched the bookcase project. The group hopes that getting books into the hands of incarcerated people doesn’t just connect them to the world outside the prison walls, but also reminds them that they are not forgotten.
“I’m doing a lot of things that I never thought I could do,” Byrd said. “First of all, making furniture that’s beautiful. I never worked with wood before.”
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 in the workshop. 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.
“I’ve been stocked on a shelf in Amazon,” he said. “I’m just a serial number.”
Books helped Flynn connect with other people. He read a wide range of genres while in prison.
“I don’t know how to be a husband, so I’ll grab the Harlequin romances,” he said. “And I’ll read them.”
A special delivery
The Freedom Reads employees don’t just build the bookcases — they also bring them inside the prisons.
On one summer day, Byrd and Flynn and other members of the Freedom Reads team are visiting York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Niantic, Connecticut. Byrd is working sound equipment 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. On this day, they are opening the 500th Freedom Library.
In the gym, poet and Freedom Reads founder Reginald Dwayne Betts addresses the crowd without a podium. He’s holding a copy of his latest book, “Doggerel.” He tells the audience that he was once in prison, too.
There are well over a hundred people watching — standing room only. Almost everyone is dressed in a maroon shirt and blue pants, and they are all holding copies of Betts’ book. They’re looking down as they follow along.
At one point Betts forgets to say the page number of the poem he’s reading.
“Page?” someone in the audience called out.
“Page 78,” Betts said. “You see how I’ve got a bad memory.”
‘A gift to me’
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.
That means something when access to books is limited. In a lot of prisons across the country, library visits don’t happen every day, and books can be torn with pages missing.
Freedom Reads’ books are all brand new.
In the unit, the bookcases are set up, but 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. Petra Rivera is one of the people who worked on the mural.
“This is more of a gift to me than you guys could possibly imagine,” Rivera said. “To be a part of this, to be a part of this history, to be able to honor such an amazing movement.”
Soon, everyone eagerly crowds the bookcases, opening cardboard boxes. They fill the shelves with books.
When they finish, Freedom Reads employees mingle with incarcerated folks.
David Perez DeHoyos, Freedom Reads’ library coordination manager, talks to Abigail Wood, who is incarcerated at York.
“When I was locked up, I read 143 books … but there’s probably like five that I still remember where I’m like, ‘Oh, they changed me,’” Perez DeHoyos said.
“I’m at 617 right now,” Wood said.
At one point, someone mentions how nice it is to have something in the prison 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 with them a piece of the outside world.
