my january donation was a special one! i was with a and g at books inc in berkeley and saw that they had a shelf dedicated to books requested by incarcerated folks. you could pick a book (or more) and the bookstore would donate the books through the Prisoners Literature Project. there are a lot of rules about what goes in and out of prisons, so a regular person is generally unable to personally donate books.
i LOVE this idea!! not only would i be supporting a local and independent bookseller, but i would also be helping some incarcerated people. plus, there were actually requested books, not just stuff that i thought people might like to read. and even better? a lot of the books were on sale!! hahaha, so i picked three books that made up about my usual $25 donation and purchased them to donate.
this donation is especially meaningful to me because j and i have been listening a lot to ear hustle, a podcast out of san quentin state prison that interviews currently and previously incarcerated people to talk about life both inside and outside prison. g introduced it to me many years ago, and while i did like it, this kind of storytelling podcast isn't really my thing so i kind of forgot about it for a while. then, somewhere along our cross country road trip from boston to la, i was running out of our regular podcasts and remembered this on. j likes the moth so i figured he might like this one, and lo and behold, he does. :)
