Abolish Prison Book Bans, Abolish Prisons

For Prison Banned Books Week, buy a book for someone in prison and your donation will be matched.

Here’s a pop quiz to kick off your Friday: What do computer programming guides, road atlases, and sex ed textbooks all have in common?

Answer: In the state of Texas (and many others), these are all materials banned by prisons.

Of course, that is only the beginning of the list of books banned by various prison systems nationwide. Per the Marshall Project’s prison book bans database published in 2022, you’ve got banned classics like The Color Purple and The Bluest Eye. Then there are surprises, like books on magic tricks, and books related to the Twilight series. There are regional variations, too: while other state systems have banned Mein Kampf, Texas wasn’t one of them.

Most coverage of book bans has understandably focused on the bigoted right-wing crusade against publicly-funded libraries lending out books on race and gender. But the reality is state prison systems censor more books than all state schools and libraries combined. This is according to a campaign from Prison Banned Books Week, which is being held this week, September 15-21, 2024. And amid all the rightful furor over homophobic and racist book bans across the country, the exclusion of prisons from these mainstream narratives on censorship is deeply shameful and harmful.

Prisons exist to create profit and social control under the guise of “criminal rehabilitation,” and these book bans are indicative of the ever-growing abuses that prisons dole out to the people they incarcerate. They are a feature of prisons working as intended, not a bug, and that’s not even mentioning how prisons censor incarcerated people and the stories they share with the outside world.

But even if we were to examine these bans through a pro-prison lens — where prisons are supposedly these enriching facilities where incarcerated people can learn to improve themselves — in what way does banning various For Dummies manuals, language learning dictionaries, and Judy Blume further those goals?

That little bit of trivia up top that I opened this blog with was something I learned last fall while touring the library of Inside Books Project, a volunteer organization in Austin that sends free reading material to people incarcerated in Texas. IBP is just one of dozens of organizations doing this kind of work.

For Prison Banned Books Week, many of these organizations are collecting purchased books to donate to people in prison, and are getting cash-matched donations for up to $1,000. Below I’ve put together a list of call outs for these donation drives, which are running through September 28.

To see which group serve which prison populations, or if your state/region isn’t represented below, you can find a full list of “books to prisoners” groups at the Prison Book Program website.

Prison Book Program - Indie bookstore partners include Harvard Bookstore, All She Wrote Books, Porter Square Books, Brookline Brooksmith, Panethnic Pourovers, Wellesley Books, Frugal Bookstore, and Better World Books.

Pittsburgh Prison Book Project - Purchase a book in-person this week from White Whale Bookstore or City of Asylum, or purchase from their Bookshop.org wishlist.

Prison Books Collective (Durham)- Partnering with Golden Fig Books.

Books to Prisoners (Seattle) - Partnering bookstores are Left Bank Books, Outsider Comics, Phinney Books, Queen Anne Book Company, and Third Place Books.

Midwest Books to Prisoners (Chicago) - Pilsen Community Books and Skunk Cabbage Books

Books Through Bars Philly - Partnering with Making Worlds Books and Bindlestiff Bookstore

Asheville Prison Books - Partnering with Firestorm Coop

Inside Books Project (Texas) - Parntering with Making Worlds

Liberation Lit (Kansas City and Lawrence) - Partnering with Raven Book Store

San Quentin Library Friends - Partnering with Coppersfield’s Books