November 2025 Newsletter

This month the team opened Libraries in Missouri and I read from Doggerel in the women’s prison.  Our newest team member, James Davis III, took his first trip in 30 years, to return to a prison after being locked up in one for almost that long.  I left Missouri so early in the morning that even the earliest dragon birds  were still asleep. The night was still run by raccoons and opossums, the creatures that I've learned to love while riding on my 3am treks.  I was at the airport, and it felt like I had walked into a scene from Percy Jackson, because everything was open. Starbucks was open, another coffee shop was open, and a bar was open. That's where I had breakfast. I walked to the bar starving in a way that only a man who has just left a prison knows and I wanted potatoes. “These mornings are familiar,” I say to no one, thinking of all my recent mornings in airports. “I once had a rule, I only drink when I’m awake,” the person beside me said. When I mentioned my poem, Whiskey for Breakfast, the bartender, this dark-haired woman, who stared just about as far as my mom, said, “Now you must read for your breakfast.” She didn't expect me to, but I sang: my liver, awash in all but the dregs of a charred out cask…. 

I read the rest of the poem, and then I started talking about Freedom Reads and the more than two dozen Freedom Libraries we’d opened across the two Missouri prisons. And the man beside who only drank when his eyes were open said that he had been arrested, and locked up for three years in the prison where we’d just opened Freedom Libraries. 

Freedom Reads is  closing in on the end of our fifth year of existence. We have gone from an idea to a team that has traveled the country, went into over 50 prisons and will have opened more than 600 Freedom Libraries by the end of this year.  We have laughed, we have wept, we have wondered where the next piece of funding will come from. But we have never wondered if we would show up. That is what we do.

As we go into the giving season and our end-of-year campaign, I would be remiss at doing my job if I didn't ask people to support us and  give. So I’m asking you again to give. But also, I’d like to ask you to consider purchasing John J Lennon’s new book, The Tragedy of True Crime. He's a friend of Freedom Reads, an excellent writer. He's serving 28 years to life in Sing Sing. His book is phenomenal. But also what he's done with his art and his life after the tragic murder that led to his incarceration is really dope. He donated $10,000 to Freedom Reads – $10,000 to bring Freedom Libraries inside for more people like him and me and the many members of our team who did their time inside and now show up to give to others. I ask that you donate and ask a friend to do the same. 

Reginald Dwayne Betts
Freedom Reads Founder & CEO

By James Davis III, Communications Associate

Just 100 days since leaving prison after 25 years and 6 months, and I was going back inside. Working for Freedom Reads means going back to prison. Freedom Reads went to Missouri to open 35 Freedom Libraries in two facilities and they would be the first two in the state to have the beautifully handcrafted wooden libraries. Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (WERDCC) received 15 cherry wood libraries built in the New Orleans office; 20 libraries built in the home office in Connecticut went to FRDC (Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center). It was my first trip to open Freedom Libraries with the team and it was intense.

By Reginald Dwayne Betts, Founder & CEO

The first time I went to Puerto Rico, my oldest son, Micah—who just turned eighteen this month—was still in grade school. His little brother Miles wasn’t yet a year old. It was 2012 and I would have never imagined Freedom Reads, an organization that believes literature is a conduit to the kind of joy I felt watching my oldest play with his little brother walking distance from one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever traversed. The clarity of the water, the way the waves half-washed all the years of prison I’d known. I was there for a conference, and prison was somehow both the furthest thing from my mind and the closest thing on it. Because that’s how it’s been since March 4th, 2005: no matter the city, no matter the coast, every place I’ve been has circled back to prison, or to the long shadow of my relationship with it.

By Ray V. Boyd, Program Manager at Yale University Law and Racial Justice Center

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 19 years 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.

At Freedom Reads, every role is essential to bringing books and hope into prisons. Teryn Jasmin, our Assistant Controller, exemplifies the vital financial work that keeps our organization running smoothly and ensures that our mission can thrive.

Teryn’s day-to-day work is grounded in precision. She manages money, pays bills, reviews and approves expense reports, and categorizes daily transactions. Though accounting and finance often operate out of sight, Teryn knows how crucial this work is in supporting the people and programs of Freedom Reads. “I enjoy the people I work with and contributing to the mission behind the scenes,” she says.

By Mobolaji Otuyelu, Creative Assistant

I first encountered Albert Camus’ L’Étranger (The Stranger) in a college philosophy class. It was the first time I came across the concept of the Absurd. As a student navigating a country far removed from the one I had always known, the book gave me language to make sense of a world that felt unfamiliar and strange. I realized this new world could become a place where ambiguity was a refuge, where life’s contradictions could exist without neat explanations. This initial encounter left an impression I have carried with me ever since.

This November, we’re still feeling the impact of The Washington Post’s moving profile of Freedom Reads Founder & CEO, Reginald Dwayne Betts. Our recent Missouri Freedom Library openings were also featured in the Missouri Department of Corrections newsletter. Our work, and the stories we honor, continue to echo widely—each feature a testament to how far we’ve come and how deeply this mission inspires. 

Follow Freedom Reads on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get regular updates about our work, new Freedom Library openings, and the stories that keep this movement alive.

What can dogs teach us about seeing the world differently?
 
Join Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet, lawyer, and Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, and Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, cognitive scientist and head of Barnard’s Dog Cognition Lab, for an evening of poetry and conversation inspired by Doggerel, Dwayne’s latest poetry collection. Together, they’ll explore how dogs expand our sense of attention, wonder, and freedom—and how poetry and science each help us notice what we often overlook.

Event Details
Where: Library for Arts & Culture at 10 Lafayette Avenue, Second Floor in Brooklyn, NY
Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 pm | Readings, conversation, and Q&A
Free admission | Reception to follow

Each newsletter we aim to share at least one letter (or excerpt) from one of Freedom Reads now 37,000-plus Freedom Library patrons. Freedom Reads receives many letters from the Inside. They mean so much to us. And we respond to each and every one of them.