Blog

On October 20, 2025, I was at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in California. Just outside the prison, you can look out and see one of the most beautiful views in the world. Staring out on the bay, near the horizon, the fog slowly lifts and you would be surprised that a prison is within walking distance. Dozens and dozens of us showed up to the second annual San Quentin Film Festival, brought to us by Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, who's spent more than two decades of his life at San Quentin, and his cousin Cori Thomas—who is not really his cousin but is his cousin in the way that prison teaches you the profound ways that we choose our families.

When Tim O'Brien came back from Vietnam, he was struck by how little his hometown understood about his time in war, how far their world was from the one he’d experienced in the army. Out of that silence, The Things They Carried was born. A book that gathered the stories of men he served with — Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, Norman Bowker — and held them close. Through their stories, O’Brien wrote of the weight each man carried: memory, fear, love, and the small, fragile things that made them human.

At Freedom Reads, stories are at the heart of everything we do. They build bridges, open doors, and remind us what transformation looks like in real time. Craig L. Gore is a natural story-teller who brings both craftsmanship and compassion to his dual role as a Communications Associate and a member of the Library Production team.

The who, behind those words is still a blur to me almost 40 yrs later. The impact of those words on my young mind proved strong during the many tumultuous moments of my life.  It is always something that I read, or remember reading, that helps me to overcome obstacles and survive the storms I encounter in life.

I attended a book reading and discussion hosted by Freedom Reads on October 10th with acclaimed poet and Freedom Reads founder and CEO, Dwayne Betts, and award-winning author and Harvard professor, Imani Perry, at MCI-Framingham. When I arrived at the women’s prison I learned that it is the oldest operating women's prison in the country, opening in 1877. 

Far too many stories I tell about someone else end up becoming stories I tell about someone allowing me to see myself truer. It’s the tragedy of going to prison as a sixteen-year-old, long before I’d had the experiences or sense of knowing who I was. And still, some of the stories become the best ways to remember the people. When I met Aggie Gund, I was running late. I’d been invited by Elizabeth Alexander to meet with Aggie and a group of others about the beginning of Art for Justice.

At Freedom Reads, no two days look alike—and no one knows that better than Tyler Sperrazza, Chief of Production Officer of Library Division. Tyler is at the heart of the work that brings Freedom Libraries into prisons across the country.

During the fall of 2021, I drove down a stretch of highway headed towards MCI-Norfolk, a prison in Massachusetts made famous in part by the years that Malcolm X and other prisoners incarcerated there did their thing on a debate team that battled the likes of Harvard and other elite institutions. I was headed there with my Freedom Reads’ team to open our first Freedom Library. It’s a wondrous thing to do something for the first time, and on that morning, having ridden for two hours in the passenger seat, an open laptop as I wrote about the late Michael K Williams, I struggled with the juxtaposition I’ve lived with since handcuffs first graced my wrists: the possibility and potential of Black men and all the public ways we often die too soon. Williams once told me that his dream was to build a center where young folks who were like he once was, desiring more than the violence and poverty around them, could actively envision better tomorrows and learn dance and acting and what it means to be safe. That is part of my dream for the Freedom Library.

To encapsulate their summer spent at Freedom Reads, our interns reflected on experiences that were both deeply personal and profoundly connected to the organization’s mission. A shared sentiment ran through each of their reflections: gratitude for the opportunity to contribute to meaningful work and admiration for the passion of the Freedom Reads team. At the same time, each intern brought a distinct perspective, shaped by the projects they took on and the memories they carried away.

Everyone who has ever been given a state number has a story of a cell door closing. And too often the stories that make it out from behind those closed cell doors are of sorrow. The sorrow of so many become the substance of films and of folklore, of the narratives of men like Malcolm X or Nathan McCall or Petey Greene or Merle Haggard or a half‑a‑dozen men in Bruce Springsteen songs. So many of us with debts no honest man can pay. I think of Susan Burton or Angela Davis or the many women I’ve met as I’ve walked back into prisons, their names less well known, but their struggles no less visceral. And yet, the thing less known than all those stories is how often an open book leads to shifting someone’s life—even for simply the span of time it takes to get from that first page to the last.