Bookshelves full of every genre line the walls of the Social Justice Center on Williamson Street. Some volunteers sit at a table writing letters, and others look through the stacks, curating packages for queer and trans incarcerated people across the country.

Over the past 10 years, LGBT Books to Prisoners has sent books to more than 9,000 people with the mission to get books into the hands of LGBTQIA+ identifying incarcerated people so they can learn and grow on their own terms.

Would you talk more about the mission? Why is it important to send LGBTQ books?   

Sandy Olson: We are prison abolitionists. We are doing a form of harm reduction. We can’t get rid of prisons today, though we wish we could. But what we can do is send books to queer and trans people who are locked up, and that is part of liberatory practices.

It’s also important to know that queer and trans people are targeted by police and by prisons and jails and other carceral systems…They are disproportionately targeted by the state. There are more queer and trans people in prison proportionately compared to the rest of society.

Nicholas Leete: They’re disproportionately targeted once they’re in prison, by the state again…The idea of prison abolition is counter to this theory that the way to repair harm or the way to make safety is imprisonment.

Queers are more likely to be targeted. Queers of color are more likely to be targeted. Immigrant queers are more likely to be targeted. Low-income people who are queer are more likely to be targeted for various reasons. And then, once in prison, because society is fractal and prison culture is everywhere, measures of confinement are used to create “safety.” So you have a lot more people whose freedoms are further restricted. They’re put into solitary confinement, which is a form of torture, for their “own safety.” So people need more books to read…It’s not solving the problem of state torture…it’s a measure of harm reduction.

SO: Anytime someone gets mail from outside that is humanizing. The guards and other staff and the people around them are like, “well, somebody on the outside cares about this person. They must be important.” It raises the stature of that person in their eyes.

People get to choose what they’re asking for and what they’re getting, within the limits of what we have. Making autonomous choices is something that is liberatory. And usually they get a note, not everyone gets a note, but a lot of people are getting a note from us that is personal. That says “Hey, we’re thinking of you, you’re part of the community,” etc.

What is an overview of the process? 

NL: Someone will hear from someone else who got books from us, or they see us on resource lists, and they send us a letter. Usually, it’s a small note. You’ll get people wondering what our deal is, how much it costs.

It’s important that people have agency and autonomy. So, we’re not just sending out books willy-nilly, they’re part of the process. One of us reads the letter and makes sure they’re asking for books. Then they check our database of prison restrictions and make note of the restrictions, for example whether the books has to be hardcover or softcover or contain no nudity or only educational nudity.

SO: There are a lot of restrictions that they’ll claim there is some reason behind, but the reason is pretty shoddy. My experience of working on these restrictions is that it’s a tool of oppression rather than for safety or the order of their facility. It’s about oppression and control, and dehumanizing people even more.

How do you work around the various restrictions and book bans? 

NL: When I’m filling a request, there are two things determining what to send: What the person requested as well as all the restrictions.

SO: You have to thread the needle.

NL: There’s this book called Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, which is hugely popular, and people find it very helpful.

SO: There’s no replacement for this—it’s a textbook that is more than 600 pages long. What are you going to do if this is the information they need, and we can’t get it to them? Nothing, but that’s just one example. There are also places that have bans on stickers. Some places don’t accept any used books at all. We’ve had problems lately where they’re complaining about too much tape on packages and sending it back to us.

Are there any needs you are looking to fill? 

NL: We need to catch up on the backlog of requests. If we had more volunteers, more books, and more funds to buy books, then we could send more books out. Longer term, a goal is to get more involved with the other local prison abolitionist organizations dealing with all the restrictions around what type of books we can send.

SO: As for immediate needs, I actually think we’re doing well. We just need more book genres to draw from. There’s room for people to get involved, and we are doing really well.

What I didn’t understand when I started was the scale of the problem—I think it is something that is important to know. You can gently learn about the problems and do something that is materially and emotionally helpful.