It's been awhile since we last posted-- or met-- as Prison Impact in the free world. That's because we decided to take the reading group in the prison. We now meet in the 'local' prison in our area, located in Danville. The focus of the group is directed by all the participants. We have about 10-13 men that come to the group so far. We meet one time a month for 3 hours. To get started, we chose the first book-- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which was a huge hit. Several of the men in the group were excited to read about their home neighborhood. We thought that this book was a nice start as it laid out the intersections of immigration, labor, class, race and other tenuous issues that produce crisis.
From there, the group chose our next books:
A People's History of the U.S. by Howard Zinn
What's Class Got to Do With It edited by Micheal Zweig
Race Matters by Cornell West.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle.
The conversations about history, class and race have been dense, complicated and rewarding.
The next book we will read is The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America by Nicolas Leman. After that, we hope to acquire these books:
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez
and
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere
Discipline and Punishment by Michel Foucault
We will use this site as a place to post the books we are reading and REQUEST donations for books or fund: If you own any of the books we will read in the future and would like to donate your copy, please contact us. If you are able to make a donation of any amount, we will use it to purchase books. $60-90 will purchase books for one the whole group for one month. Thank you!
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