Finding knowledge in unexpected places
Prison book club opens new horizons for incarcerated readers
On the day that I arrive at the privately run Wilkinson County Correctional Facility outside Woodville, Mississippi, I am surprised to find the front gate open and the guardhouse unoccupied.
The maximum-security prison is sometimes described as the most violent in the state, and is otherwise closely guarded, yet the ease with which a visitor enters its perimeter is the first of many surprises that day. Another is the innovative approach that prison administrators take to educating inmates.
I am here as part of a book club program that has attracted enthusiastic readers looking to turn their lives around. Despite the wariness that a visitor naturally feels upon entering a prison, and interruptions brought on by occasional lockdowns, the book club proves to be a remarkably positive experience for all concerned.
Entering the Wilkinson prison itself is more in line with a visitor’s expectations. After passing through two outdoor electronic gates surrounded by tall fences topped with razor wire, a visitor must turn over their car keys, present ID, get scanned by a metal detector and be escorted through a succession of internal electronic gates into the secured zone. As I make this passage for the first time, I memorize the route in case I have to quickly repeat it, going in the opposite direction, in the event of a prison lockdown. I am new at this, outside my familiar comfort zone.
Looming offstage are a few disturbing apparitions, including of book club members whose involvement in previous crimes I had researched, to understand who I would be dealing with. As with so many preconceived notions, the criminal backdrop will fade in importance as it becomes apparent that this is an affable group thirsting for knowledge and a way to internally escape the mental, emotional and physical isolation of prison. Some of them are also brilliant in their literary assessments. The crimes that have brought us together will be evoked only occasionally, in passing, such as when certain details inform their comments about the book at hand, which, starting out, is Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give.
Unlike in typical book club gatherings, when readers may feel the need to make vaguely informed, even gratuitous observations, every comment by members of what is known as the Inspired Readers club at the Wilkinson prison is well worth listening to. When I later mention this to the eight members who attend the second club meeting, one of them will point out, “There’s no room for bullshit in prison. Nothing is hidden here. Everything is exposed.” The result is an unexpectedly productive book club dynamic. Our initial discussions of Thomas’s novel, which chronicles a world of gangs, crime and racial injustice that is familiar to the club members, are remarkably candid and illuminating.
Our next book, Station Eleven, will take them farther afield, to a post-apocalyptic world that requires them to explore unfamiliar surroundings, including stagings of Shakespearean plays, and cerebral musings that several of them find cryptic and off-putting. Yet the point is to open new horizons. Challenges come with the territory.
Inspired Readers is among 11 book clubs operated by the Mississippi Humanities Council at seven state prisons, under a program funded by the Mellon Foundation and the James and Madeline McMullan Family Foundation. It has proved to be an effective and popular way to help educate inmates and to open their minds during incarceration. It is also educational for people like me who facilitate the club meetings, typically with few constraints aside from the obvious ones – we are behind bars, after all, and it is best to avoid discussing specific crimes or to focus on books with the potential to cause internal controversy. I have also been advised to use “people-first” language when referencing the club members, rather than describing them as prisoners or inmates. We are here to put such things aside, to the degree that is possible. When crime inevitably comes up, it is usually in comments by the members themselves. The point of the club is to help bridge those turbulent undercurrents from the past as they contemplate their current and future lives.
The club’s earlier discussions of The Hate U Give, the title of which comes from a poem by Tupac Shakur, were interrupted by a prison lockdown in May 2024 and by the departure of the previous facilitator. As a result, I am the new guy, having taken on the role both to help the members explore the literary world and out of curiosity, as someone attempting to navigate a crime-ridden world. Talking about books with men whose mug shots have been plastered across the local crime news is educational for me, too. Though Mississippi’s rate of violent crime has, like in most of the United States, fallen since 2022, the state capital, Jackson, has the highest murder rate in the nation and gang shootings are common even in small towns. The book club members were a part of this dynamic, but what matters in the context of Inspired Readers is the future. Books can help turn their lives around.
Years before, I had spoken to a class of juvenile offenders at Mississippi’s Oakley training school and was inspired by the students’ efforts to find a voice through writing. As a writer, I obviously am invested in both reading and writing, so when I heard that the Humanities Council had launched its prison book club program, I wanted to be involved. I was told there was an opening at the Wilkinson prison that had proved difficult to fill, mainly because the facility is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Jackson. My preference would have been a prison closer to home, but the Wilkinson prison needed someone, so that is where I went.
It quickly became apparent that the members had a lot to share about themselves, the world around them, each other and the stories told in books. Our conversations involve a shared language that transcends the obvious divides.
One book club member observed that books open his mind to possibilities both within the prison and outside its fortified walls.
“You’ve got to figure out the value of things,” he said. “I learned that being locked up. Before, it was always the money someone had. Now, I look for knowledge.”
A version of this article previously ran in the substack What Happened.
Alan Huffman is a freelance writer, author and political researcher based in Bolton, Mississippi. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, ProPublica, the Washington Post and numerous other publications.
Image: Wilkinson County Correctional Facility via Google Earth