The Power of Suggestion
Robert Lee Williams is a journalist and poet. His work has been published by Literary Hub, PEN America, Plough Quarterly (United States/and Germany), and Slate. Williams is serving his 15th year of incarceration in New York.
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Artist Titus Kaphar is leaving his mark on Philadelphia
Artist Titus Kaphar's film, Exhibiting Forgiveness, is out in theaters. Freedom Reads partnered with Kaphar to screen the film at the California Institution for Men before it was released in theaters.
3 CT prisons will get new libraries
Freedom Reads, with support from the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority (CHEFA) and Senators Murphy and Blumenthal, opened 42 Freedom Libraries in Connecticut prisons this month.
Life Inside, Remixed: The Emotional Toll of Visiting a Son in Jail
In this animated story, Ymilul Bates visits her teenage son for the first time since he’s been incarcerated.
What People Want to Eat for Their First Meal After Prison
The first meal after prison is “sacred,” as Justin Slavinksi emphasizes. He himself looks forward to his mom’s meatloaf, while other incarcerated people he interviews look forward to their own unique takes–and it’s not about the food, it’s about the ability to choose.
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Freedom Reads: Rewriting Our Futures
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The Past's Presence: Jesmyn Ward
In today’s episode, Jesmyn Ward reads from her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which is at once a bildungsroman, a ghost story, an epic, and a road novel. In portraying the suck of Parchman Prison on the generations of one Mississippi family, Ward deftly explores how the real threat of incarceration haunts these psyches and, in turn, these familial relationships. In this moving conversation, Ward reflects on living with grief, on listening for communications from beyond our immediate reality, and on the central commitments of her work: to restore agency to the kinds of characters too often denied a voice—and to grant acceptance to the ones harder to forgive. (July 26, 2021)