Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Last Archive listeners, this is Jill Lapour. We're
Speaker 1: hard at work on season three and can't wait to
Speaker 1: share it with you. It's all about reason, about finding
Speaker 1: our way towards hope and common knowledge and out of
Speaker 1: the epistemological pickle we explored in seasons one and two.
Speaker 1: But making a new season takes time, so meanwhile, I
Speaker 1: want to introduce you to a new limited run series
Speaker 1: that I'm doing, called The Last Archivist. Over the years,
Speaker 1: I've met hundreds and hundreds of archivists, collectors, curators, librarians,
Speaker 1: keepers of history, people with trinkets and facts and ideas
Speaker 1: that I want to add to our collection of the
Speaker 1: known things. In this series, you'll hear from a few
Speaker 1: of them about their work, like how to sit up
Speaker 1: a library in a prison, what four decades worth of
Speaker 1: eyeglasses can tell us about the history of a person,
Speaker 1: And why a trash collector in Pittsburgh is a kind
Speaker 1: of archivist too. It's gonna be fun. This series is
Speaker 1: just for Pushkin Plus subscribers, but we're dropping the first
Speaker 1: episode for you here in the feed. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear the rest, subscribe at the Last Archive show
Speaker 1: page and Apple podcasts or go to pushkin dot fm,
Speaker 1: slash plus and thanks for listening. Welcome to The Last Archivist,
Speaker 1: the show where I talked to archivists about the collections
Speaker 1: and records they keep and why. In this episode, I
Speaker 1: talked to Reginald Dwayne Betts. He's the author of three books,
Speaker 1: including Felon, a collection of poems about the effects of incarceration.
Speaker 1: He's also an actor, a lawyer, and a teacher, and
Speaker 1: the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant. We talked about
Speaker 1: Freedom Reads, an organization Bets started to bring literature to
Speaker 1: jails in prison across the country. Bets was incarcerated as
Speaker 1: a teenager and given a nine year sentence. While in prison,
Speaker 1: a fellow inmate gave him a book and it changed
Speaker 1: his life. He wants to give other incarcerated people that
Speaker 1: experience too, so he's building libraries in prison cells. But
Speaker 1: I'll let him tell you about it. My name is
Speaker 1: regend Dwayne Betts, and I'm the founder and director of
Speaker 1: Freedom Reads, a project that is meant to curate and
Speaker 1: build freedom libraries and prisons across this country. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for doing this when you have so much going on.
Speaker 1: This is really really exciting. So I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the Freedom library as an archive in
Speaker 1: a collection. I have this podcast that's about kind of
Speaker 1: where knowledge lives, like where we store ideas and memories,
Speaker 1: and so I'm kind of fascinated, like, of all the
Speaker 1: things that you could have done, most of which you're
Speaker 1: actually also doing different forms of prison education or prison
Speaker 1: writing programs, or your own poetry and memoir writing, your
Speaker 1: own performance. Why a library, you know, honestly, I feel
Speaker 1: like maybe library is the most radical thing I imagine
Speaker 1: being able to be done. But also it's the thing
Speaker 1: that's absolutely quintessential to some movement, to actual building of
Speaker 1: a community, to actually build another civilization, to actually build
Speaker 1: another democracy. It's like, where's your repository of language? And
Speaker 1: what does it mean to actually make that accessible? And
Speaker 1: not make it accessible in a symbolic way. A lot
Speaker 1: of us don't live in a world with a library
Speaker 1: actually functions as pure symbol. We think about some public
Speaker 1: schools that aren't the greatest schools. They still have libraries
Speaker 1: in the school and they still push the students to
Speaker 1: attend to go to those libraries. And maybe everybody doesn't
Speaker 1: go to the new York Public Library who lives in
Speaker 1: New York. But that's why they have satellite branches, and
Speaker 1: those libraries work really hard to make the services amenable
Speaker 1: and attractive to everybody in the community. In prison, you're
Speaker 1: lucky if you could get to the library once some money,
Speaker 1: and when you get that, you have twenty five minutes.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I remember coming home and people
Speaker 1: will criticize me because I hadn't read a lot of Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, why would I have read
Speaker 1: a lot of Shakespeare. I was going to the library
Speaker 1: for twenty five minutes. I just had time to go
Speaker 1: to what I hungered for. I didn't have the time
Speaker 1: to explore what I might want. And so for me,
Speaker 1: it was both a process of curation in a process
Speaker 1: of creating the expectation for others. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what does it mean when I create the expectation from
Speaker 1: somebody who's doing time in prison to end up in
Speaker 1: these spaces. In conversations with Sonya Sanchez, I mean, in
Speaker 1: conversations with Jill Lapoor, you were publishing books, you were
Speaker 1: a scholar when I was in prison, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know that you existed. And that's that's like a tragedy,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like, how might my
Speaker 1: world have been different had I been hipped to more
Speaker 1: than just that one historical text that people quote. And
Speaker 1: so I feel like, you know, I want to have
Speaker 1: a role and saying that the books matter because the
Speaker 1: books matter. You know, the books don't matter because you
Speaker 1: you're gonna read them and necessarily become something different. They
Speaker 1: matter because it's the foundational principle of trying to build
Speaker 1: something more and without it, you can't build more. So
Speaker 1: the question I have are you working on this project
Speaker 1: or the Freedom Library, is whether it's changed how you
Speaker 1: think about books. You know, we can think about books
Speaker 1: as a gift or a book says a refuge, books
Speaker 1: as an escape, Like, there are lots of different ways
Speaker 1: we think about books. I'm wondering if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: books has changed in a couple of ways. One, I've
Speaker 1: realized how a lot of us have a common vocabulary,
Speaker 1: and I've thought about how to push against that. And
Speaker 1: so certain books come up and you see that because
Speaker 1: you share experiences and you share education, folks are where
Speaker 1: those books. But then I've watched how in conversation you
Speaker 1: see that the really beautiful moments come when when it's
Speaker 1: an introduction of a book that somebody hadn't heard of.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I've noticed is that in
Speaker 1: curating a collection, you work very hard to see people
Speaker 1: I do. So I can't just have the run of
Speaker 1: books that you will read as a PhD student in
Speaker 1: sociology or a PhD student in law or PhD student
Speaker 1: in history. It has to be far more complex than that.
Speaker 1: Going up and down. I recognize that, you know, the
Speaker 1: dog books have to have light in it, and you
Speaker 1: have to understand what that light means, and it can't
Speaker 1: just be because somebody said it so. But also I
Speaker 1: recognize that it is fifteen different ways to understand every book.
Speaker 1: And I've been having arguments with people who say, well,
Speaker 1: Jane Austen means this, I don't know like and somebody
Speaker 1: will say, are you really I'm going to include hard
Speaker 1: of Darkness? I mean, don't you understand. Layla Lalami wrote
Speaker 1: a beautiful introduction to that book where she talked about
Speaker 1: it was the first book in the English language she read.
Speaker 1: We bring meaning to books in the same way they
Speaker 1: bring meanings to us, and the question is what can
Speaker 1: I make a community aware of as I do this work,
Speaker 1: and so in developing this library, I'm trying really hard
Speaker 1: to engage with people in a way in which they've
Speaker 1: remind me of their similar stories, so that some of
Speaker 1: those books creep into this library and it's not and
Speaker 1: it becomes an enterprise that allows people to meet themselves
Speaker 1: where they are and grow somewhere. But it also becomes
Speaker 1: i think, a symbol or that very process of becoming
Speaker 1: and not this idea of like, you know, if I
Speaker 1: had the books, Like if I was like, who are
Speaker 1: you as a lawyer? And I put towards and contracts
Speaker 1: and then you looked at that bookshelf, it wouldn't really
Speaker 1: communicate much except the finish line. But every beautiful library
Speaker 1: I think reflects more to journey. So what do you
Speaker 1: hear from readers? I should tell you, Like one guy,
Speaker 1: he says, oh you you send it in um Man
Speaker 1: Search for mena man that book changed my life. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I was in a bad way and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this guy and I'm like yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was so shoo bought it and it's like just
Speaker 1: like forty He's like late thirties. Black dude, you know,
Speaker 1: and like deeply talking about that's the book that made
Speaker 1: me reimagine the world. But other things though, it's like
Speaker 1: some guys that I met who really became educated in
Speaker 1: prison he said, he said, uh, my man, Richard talks about,
Speaker 1: you know, being stomped out by the guards. He had
Speaker 1: swung on one of the CEOs and then they beat
Speaker 1: him up real bad, broke his teeth and being on
Speaker 1: the floor, mouth bloody, and later reflecting on it and
Speaker 1: thinking about how that was just KMO moment where you
Speaker 1: make a decision about whether you want to live or
Speaker 1: you just want to give up, And you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: it's something radical about talking to these guys who who
Speaker 1: get that kind of work from books. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because the books get you just up to that ledge
Speaker 1: where the next thing you under you start asking this,
Speaker 1: but how do we respond to the world given the
Speaker 1: decisions that were made? And how do we want the
Speaker 1: world to respond to us given the decisions that we made.
Speaker 1: So it's been it's been powerful. And some people haven't
Speaker 1: liked some book, you know, and it's saying and sometimes
Speaker 1: the DFC administrators are like, what people don't like the books?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's okay. So that's part of it too.
Speaker 1: It's like, you don't have to like every book. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I told, I told the warden, say, you know,
Speaker 1: part of my challenge is to remind people why these
Speaker 1: books matter, but also put emphasis on these and books
Speaker 1: and it's not singular, so maybe something else will jump
Speaker 1: out to him. Um. And I've been reminded of that,
Speaker 1: and that's been a nice lesson for myself as like
Speaker 1: a writer and a thinker who sometimes gets sad when
Speaker 1: people don't love. What I say is that, you know,
Speaker 1: the junk, these these young folks and just men and
Speaker 1: women in prison have sometimes not like books that I love,
Speaker 1: and I have to accept that and so do the writers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but also discriminating between the books that you love and
Speaker 1: you hate. It's kind of the spark too, like that's
Speaker 1: that's how you find out who you are, Like I'm
Speaker 1: a person who hates Melville. Let's now. I know that
Speaker 1: that's a lesson though honestly though, because I think that
Speaker 1: you have to have a certain kind of so confidence
Speaker 1: to really dislike a book. I know the first book
Speaker 1: that I vehemently disliked, and I know my response was
Speaker 1: the writer ten page essay about how I disliked the
Speaker 1: book and I was in solitary confinement. And I would
Speaker 1: never forget that book. I'll never forget the ideas in it.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget exactly what made me dislike it. And
Speaker 1: and I've only read it once, and I know it.
Speaker 1: I know it in ways that I don't know books
Speaker 1: that I love. It was all God's Children, Fox Butterfield,
Speaker 1: about Willie, about Willie Boskett. He was the kid that
Speaker 1: led to the New York Youth Offender law. But I
Speaker 1: know what prison I was at, I know what sale
Speaker 1: I was in. I know that I paid for the book.
Speaker 1: God damn it. Yeah. Yeah, But then you own your ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's the freedom of that, Like you
Speaker 1: own your opinion about that book. Well, you don't have much,
Speaker 1: like you can own that, especially when you don't have much.
Speaker 1: And I also think that's one of the powers of
Speaker 1: the libraries that you know, when you don't have much,
Speaker 1: you do have your own ideas, and books help you
Speaker 1: develop your ideas, to help I had ideas post reading
Speaker 1: that book that I didn't have before. You know, reading
Speaker 1: that book helped me understand the world around me. In
Speaker 1: a way that I didn't before I read the book,
Speaker 1: because I needed to be confronted with arguments I disagree
Speaker 1: with to help me know what I cared about. In
Speaker 1: the same way, in novels, you know, you get confronted
Speaker 1: with these characters that bother you. I mean, it makes
Speaker 1: you know why, you know, and it makes you maybe
Speaker 1: change some of the ways that you act in the
Speaker 1: world's like I don't maybe I was like him. I
Speaker 1: don't I want to be like him or heard, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to act like they do. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to imagine yourself being in the role in the place
Speaker 1: of another human being making a choice is to imagine choices,
Speaker 1: and in a way that you know, is about fully
Speaker 1: figuring out who you are. So you started sending out
Speaker 1: books already to prisons and to juvenile detention centers, and
Speaker 1: you're also involved in the building of physical bookshelves for
Speaker 1: the Is that right for the library to be housed in?
Speaker 1: How's that working? How's that work? It's actually fantastic. I
Speaker 1: Mean one of the ideas was, okay, what if we
Speaker 1: just build books, And then some people said, but why
Speaker 1: don't you just give books away? You know, why build
Speaker 1: a space. Would you say that about your local library,
Speaker 1: would you say, why build a space? You know, but
Speaker 1: a library is not just a collection of books to
Speaker 1: strewn on the floor or placed on shelves. It's actually
Speaker 1: like some organizational structure that invites people to come towards it.
Speaker 1: And so that was a problem. How do you create
Speaker 1: that kind of space? How do you create a micro
Speaker 1: library within a building that only has straight lines and
Speaker 1: right angles that typically your understanding of it is only
Speaker 1: based on violence. And it has to be more than
Speaker 1: like the bookshelf behind me. And so we created something beautiful.
Speaker 1: We had them design something that has curves because no
Speaker 1: curves exist in prison. We had them designed something when
Speaker 1: you can access to books on both sides, because we
Speaker 1: want people to come together and meet at the stacks,
Speaker 1: you know, and be able to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: And what's really de fascinating is that it's forced me
Speaker 1: to gain knowledge from others, you know, It's forced me
Speaker 1: to accept what I'm not an expert in. So I'm
Speaker 1: learning what sheep goods are. I'm learning that some woods
Speaker 1: are soft and some words at heart. And I'm working
Speaker 1: with the Department of Corrections and recognizing that prisons are
Speaker 1: violent places, and so we have to build a structure
Speaker 1: that doesn't hurt somebody, you know, we have to build
Speaker 1: a structure where the wood isn't so soft that it
Speaker 1: could be piled and turned in the weapons. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are like serious considerations that I think going to
Speaker 1: creating something beautiful, but going to creating something beautiful within
Speaker 1: the context where it exists, recognizing at once it's created,
Speaker 1: all of us will want this in our house. And
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to bridge the gap between prison and
Speaker 1: freedom in such a way that it makes another argument
Speaker 1: for not needing prison. But it's acknowledging the conditions of
Speaker 1: incarceration right now and looked and fascinating. And you're the
Speaker 1: first person publicly I've told this. You know already Norton
Speaker 1: of Malcolm X fame, they gutted a prison cell, and
Speaker 1: we're turning a prison cell into a library. And I
Speaker 1: think that that is just like, you know, if I
Speaker 1: was a person who gets emotional and hadn't been like,
Speaker 1: you know, radically transformed by prison in both good and
Speaker 1: bad ways, I will be weeping at the very idea
Speaker 1: that um, you know, I was once in a hold
Speaker 1: with books will contraband, and then we'll turn in a
Speaker 1: prison cell into a library. I mean it is literally
Speaker 1: both a metaphor but an actual material fulfillment of some
Speaker 1: promise that that I always hope was possible. You know,
Speaker 1: it makes me think about her here. I remember reading
Speaker 1: that when Charles Dickens came to the United States in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two, he was really interested in prison reform,
Speaker 1: and um, he went to this prison in Philadelphia where
Speaker 1: solitary confinnement was a kind of a new practice, and
Speaker 1: he was allowed to see someone who had been in
Speaker 1: solitary confinement. Dickens was hugely opposed to solitary convironment and
Speaker 1: opposed to the conditions in the prisons. And he met
Speaker 1: this man who who just lost it, like he just
Speaker 1: lost it in solitary and he he had been given
Speaker 1: like a single newspaper sheet and he had made a
Speaker 1: hat out of it, and he wore this hat made
Speaker 1: out of a newspaper. And it's just like this wrenching
Speaker 1: moment in this account of Dickens's, like this was his
Speaker 1: reckoning with America, that this weird American moment was like
Speaker 1: watching that mind, you know, be kind of put into
Speaker 1: this cell and the way that this man was trying
Speaker 1: to escape. I don't know, just thinking about the cell
Speaker 1: being turned into a library as this just incredible, almost
Speaker 1: like Dickenzie and feel of the kind of the magnitude
Speaker 1: of that, you know, Symbolically, for me, it was walking
Speaker 1: down those corridors and filling the way that the stones
Speaker 1: carry memory, and the way that the memory of those stones,
Speaker 1: I mean they carried the memories that guy from Dickens,
Speaker 1: you know, his mind unraveling because somebody felt like the
Speaker 1: way to transform you was to put you in a
Speaker 1: dark hole and leave you there, and today decided you
Speaker 1: should be free. And you know, a part of the
Speaker 1: project is to make people recognize that. So when people say,
Speaker 1: but really, you want to build a library in a sale,
Speaker 1: I say, it's one library in one sale in America,
Speaker 1: but it's two point three million people in all of
Speaker 1: the other sales. And the question becomes, do you want
Speaker 1: to talk to me about the library that I built
Speaker 1: in that sale or do you want to talk to
Speaker 1: me about the two point three million people that we
Speaker 1: filled all of the other sales with. Because I bet
Speaker 1: if we filled all of those other sales up with libraries,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be room for people, and nobody would have
Speaker 1: a problem with those books being there, no matter how
Speaker 1: decrepit the building was. We will find out a way
Speaker 1: to get to those books because we have value in it.
Speaker 1: How can we all find a way to get to
Speaker 1: those people. Yeah, that's beautiful. I am just sell impressed
Speaker 1: by everything that you're doing and by the just the
Speaker 1: scale of this project. And it's just deep humanity and
Speaker 1: it's really gonna stick with me thinking about what it
Speaker 1: means to care about each of those two point three
Speaker 1: million people the way we care about the books in
Speaker 1: our libraries. And I just want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for everything you're doing and for taking a time
Speaker 1: to talk with us. Well, I'm super humble, and I
Speaker 1: thank you for participating and for caring about it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's probably the coolest thing I've ever
Speaker 1: done in this life, you know, if I would have
Speaker 1: picked one. And I'm glad that other people share some
Speaker 1: of my finess for it. Thanks for listening. That was
Speaker 1: Reginald Dwayne Betts. You can find out more about Freedom
Speaker 1: Reads at freedom reads dot org. If you want to
Speaker 1: hear the rest of the series, subscribe to pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: look for the last archive, show page and Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or go to pushkin, dot fm, slash plus, and if
Speaker 1: you're already a subscriber, thank you. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Lucy Sullivan. Music by Stillwagon Symphony