Going into prison as a confused and ill-informed young boy and staying for three decades, afforded me many opportunities to think about freedom. At 19yrs young I was serving a 50 year sentence and freedom in my mind was abstract. It was a word that I’ve been hearing for as long as I can remember hearing words and making out how to use them. I could never conceptualize what freedom was. I had nothing I could point to and say, “Look, freedom!” Prior to going to prison the conception of freedom in my mind was imaginary, not realistic.
After years of wrestling with this mysterious necessity that my body, soul, and mind starved for, and so many have died for in their efforts at attempting to attain and never having actually acquired. I began to slowly come to the realization that my whole life; every choice and decision I made was in reality a result of me being in pursuit of this illusive reality of freedom. The pursuit was relentless. Imagine that, me relentlessly pursuing something that I had no idea about. Wow, the things I did, the places I searched for freedom. The best illustration I can come up with is: I put on a scuba suit to dive to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean to go bear hunting… Point being that I had no clue what I was pursuing or where to find it. Innately, I knew I needed it like I needed air and water.
There came a time in my incarceration where I had exhausted the limited external means to pursue freedom so I was forced to look internally. It started slow. It was mainly surface work, looking at my physical health and then I began to look at my mental and spiritual self. When I began to search within myself for freedom, is when I discovered that there were other parts of myself that were malnourished. Literature became my nourishment. I devoured books and felt healthier every time I read one. Reading became my new road map to freedom and every book brought me closer.
After approximately two decades of following my autodidactic blueprint to attaining freedom, I met Dwayne Betts. I was incarcerated in Osborn C.I in Somers Connecticut. It was October 2016 when Dwayne was invited as a guest speaker for a program that I co-founded. After hearing him speak, I bought and read his books. I was impressed with his writing style. His style of writing was inspiring in that it was uniquely his own yet so human. While reading A Question of Freedom I was impressed by the boldness and candor that he wrote with and the way he utilized language to captivate his audience was something that appealed to me. I wanted to write The Model Inmate in a way that appealed to all people even though it was written about prison. A Question of Freedom showcased that for me. I saw that I could be authentic and write a great body of work; and deliver my message to the people that it resonates with the most. I wanted the reader to learn from my experience and to be inspired enough to know that no matter where we find ourselves in this world we can always navigate to where we need to be. That experience of meeting was very empowering and impactful on my writing going forward. I had the good fortune of crossing paths with Dwayne once I was released from prison in the fall of 2021 after serving 30 years. In March of 2023 he and I were panelists for a symposium at NXT Haven Art Gallery in my home town of New Haven, CT. I see the work that Freedom Reads is doing and I am inspired in the same way that I was inspired the first time I heard speak and read his books. I know from personal experience that it is absolutely true when Freedom Reads says, “Freedom Begins With A Book.”
Ray V. Boyd is the Program Manager at Yale University Law and Racial Justice Center, Co-founder of Next Level Empowerment Program, Connecticut Community Ambassador for The Fredrick Douglas Project forJustice, and Owner of RVB Consultant Services.