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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.

Why do some people love certain books that other people really can’t stand?  That may seem a weird question -- some people like Brussel sprouts and other people hate them, some people like to watch the news or the weather channel or romcoms and other people avoid all that as much as they can, some people love jazz music and others find it boring. To each their own.But when it comes to literature and other works of art, the way that people respond can have deeper meaning.

I was so honored, grateful, and deeply moved to be invited to speak at the Inside Literary Prize event on July 10, 2025. Not so long ago, within the walls of prison, loneliness was my constant companion. Isolation had become my reality, and hope felt like a distant memory. Each day felt heavier than the last.

At Freedom Reads, Allie serves as our Development Manager—but she’ll be the first to tell you that title only scratches the surface. Her work goes far beyond fundraising. From writing grant proposals to engaging with our Library Patrons, Allie is a key part of bringing our mission to life. She’s traveled to all 15 stops of the Inside Literary Prize tour this year, helping collect stories, discuss books, and take photos.

Once, I wrote that I met my fathers again. It’s the kind of thing that feels particular to men of my age, who grew up in the wake of the crack epidemic. Some say war on drugs, and I understand this - but it was crack cocaine that left the fathers of my youth’s eyes vacant, from a high of money or the ache of not having it. Inside, I met so many of us, barely older than me or much older, lost inside prisons from all the attendant ways that accumulating weight left us lost: murder, robbery, drug dealing. And inside, when we were sober, no longer fighting over blocks, turning to whatever gave us hope, sometimes, I swear, we saw more possible in each other than Galileo saw in the night sky.

Michael Byrd had just come home after spending 17 years in prison and didn’t even have an ID. Then he was introduced to the team at Freedom Reads through a reentry program called Emerge. In January 2024, he joined the team as a Library Production Assistant assembling and building bookcases, “and going into prisons to open Freedom Libraries.” But that was just the beginning.