When Reginald Dwayne Betts was in solitary confinement as a teen, he cried out in desperation for a book to read. Someone slipped “The Black Poets” by Dudley Randall under the door of his cell.
That book changed Betts’ life and put him on the path to where he is today: a poet, lawyer and prison reform activist. Now he is passing his passion for literature to a new generation.
This month, Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire received new libraries for residents, thanks to Betts’ Freedom Reads program.
Freedom Reads is a nonprofit based in New Haven. The program, inaugurated in 2021 and funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, has put libraries in 23 prisons nationwide. The first was in what is purportedly Malcolm X’s former cell at MCI-Norfolk in Massachusetts. One of the most recent was installed in November at York Correctional Institution for women in Niantic.
With the philosophy that “Freedom begins with a book,” Betts wants to inspire people in prisons to dream beyond the walls, as “The Black Poets” inspired him to do.
“I had read a lot of books before but not poetry. Reading poems exposed me to this idea that I could write a poem. I was seeing people capture whole worlds in a handful of lines. It was a revelation,” Betts said in a phone interview.
“The most important aspect of ‘Black Poets’ was the poems by Etheridge Knight,” he said. “He wrote poems about prison. … For me, on some fundamental level, it gave me permission to be a poet because he was one.”
‘Place that is sacred’
The three libraries at Manson are each a handmade wooden bookshelf full of scores of books curated by Betts and his friends. Unlike the prison’s main library, the shelves are easily accessible, placed in the housing units’ common meeting areas.
“Everybody deserves to see this beautifully cured hardwood. It’s definitely the most beautiful thing people will see in prison. They wake up, walk to that, and it is full of opportunities,” Betts said. “All of a sudden they have some place that is sacred, something that they can talk about. Reading is a private habit but talking about literature is a public habit.”
Betts’ installation of the libraries at Manson on Feb. 1 was accompanied by a spoken-word performance by Betts, who read from his book “Felon” to members of Manson’s music therapy group.
Jilena M. Cichon, counselor supervisor of programs and treatment at Manson, said Manson already has a library but the Freedom Reads libraries are easier for the residents to get to.
“We can only have so many different books. They are able to see different books now that they are not familiar with, and poems,” Cichon said. “Where they are located, they pass it every day. It’s a great spot in the units. It is more readily available.”
Betts said the bookshelves’ placement fosters a camaraderie among residents. This is due not just to their location in the common area, but the shape of the shelves, which necessitates placing them away from walls.
“Those bookshelves are modular, 44 inches high, and they curve. You look at the books from both sides. When looking for a book, you look into the face of the person across from you. It creates an opportunity for community,” he said.
Michael Beaton, deputy warden at York, said in addition to enjoying the books, the women at that facility are happy that the 5,000 books in their Freedom Reads library were donated by a source unaffiliated with the prison system.
“They were asking, where did the books come from? Initially they didn’t quite understand. When they heard it was an outside entity, they were like, that’s awesome, somebody outside of the prison is thinking about us,” Beaton said.
Power of poetry
Betts’ knowledge of prison life began at age 16. The Maryland native was tried as an adult for an armed carjacking he committed with a friend. What followed was more than eight years in prison.
He made those years productive. Inside, he finished high school; before the crime, he had been an honor student and was enrolled in gifted programs. He had his poetry revelation while serving in solitary confinement.
More than any other, the poems by Knight lodged in his memory. Knight embraced poetry during an eight-year prison stint for armed robbery. One favorite of Betts’ was “The Idea of Ancestry”: “Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.”
Betts said “It was such a beautiful piece, so lovely in how it was told.”
Another Knight poem that resonated with Betts was “For Freckle-Faced Gerald,” the story of a teen in prison: “Take Gerald. Sixteen years hadn’t even done a good job on his voice. He didn’t even know how to talk tough, or how to hide the glow of life before he was thrown in as ‘pigmeat’ for the buzzards to eat.”
Betts said “It hit me because I was 16. It’s about the way prison will own you, how you will suffer so much. … The only people who understand a woman walking down the street late at night is a juvenile in a prison.”
Love of literature
After he was paroled, Betts immersed himself in books and learning. He worked in a bookstore and founded a book club for Black youths. He taught poetry and writing. He got a B.A. at University of Maryland, an M.F.A. in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and a Juris Doctor from Yale, after which he passed the Connecticut bar exam. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from Yale.
Betts is a national spokesman for Campaign for Youth Justice, an initiative that condemns trying teens as adults. He has served on the Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention under President Obama, and on Connecticut’s Criminal Justice Commission, which appoints state prosecutors.
Betts published a memoir and three poetry collections. In addition to other literary awards, Betts was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.
Betts lives in New Haven. He is married and has two children.
‘Difficult beauty’
Betts said feedback he has heard from institutions that have the libraries indicate that the residents want to hear stories.
“We live on stories whether we are writers or not. We come together in groups telling stories. People in prison crave and need stories arguably more than anyone else,” he said. “Books are a way station, a possibility to imagine a life that is different. Books give you different sets of reference points. They give us access to a kind of difficult beauty.”
The books in the libraries include a wide variety of stories, by Shakespeare, Faulkner, Ellison, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Lucille Clifton, and many others, including, of course, “The Black Poets.”
Among the most popular titles around the country, Betts said, are books by James McBride, “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews, “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, “Lost in the City” by Edward P. Jones, books about abolitionist John Brown and stories by N.K. Jemisin.
Cichon said the goal at Manson is to start book clubs, after the residents have had time to find books they like. Betts already is doing that in the other Freedom Reads locations.
“Each month we send 500 to 1,000 copies of one book, 15 to 30 per prison, to create book circles,” he said. “We want to develop the experience of shared reading.”
Learn more about Freedom Reads at freedomreads.org.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
