Daniel Genis: Books for Prisoners

Daniel Genis: Books for Prisoners

Over ten years as a New York State prisoner, Daniel Genis read 1,046 books. Since his release in February of 2014, he's made a career for himself as a writer. The monthly packages of paperbacks, hardcovers and periodicals sent by his family and friends added up to an education that served Genis to avoid relapse and recidivism. However, few of NY's 58,000 prisoners are fortunate enough to have such support, state-funded higher education was dismantled in the Department of Corrections decades ago and prison libraries are less-than-ample... But the stars have aligned; after a misfortune that shut down our eBay store, we have a stock of 2,500 books ready and sources for more at low prices. Petra Szabo has ten years of experience sending reading material to prisons; Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and 8 pages of 'Newjack' are forbidden to state inmates, while Riker's Island won't take hardcovers. We don't expect rejections and know how to use Media Mail to save on postage. Daniel knows both which works are most lacking and desirable to this 'captive audience'. We'd like to send this gift to a world without Kindles or Nooks, where the Word is still treasured without digital frills. But we can't afford the operating costs: postage, shipping materials, an advertisement in Pro Se (a legal quarterly read by all prisoners) and funds to buy more books. We will be posting letters from prisoners in updates, since we'd like to make our books available both to prison librarians (who are instead swamped with religious material from convert-seeking outfits like Scientology) and individual inmates. Help us recover the value in obsolete dead trees and salvage the minds that hunger for it. Thank you!
Information on Daniel Genis:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-prisoners-reading-list
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcqVl99dRPc