Maria Montalvo speaks with emotion, her eyes shine while telling her reading experiences. She says that she especially enjoys Isabel Allende’s books, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Erika L. Sánchez and John Grisham because, in her words, “Reading makes you wisest and you learn how people live in other countries. It takes other places to which you cannot travel.”
Montalvo is not an ordinary reader. During his imprisonment at the Correctional Center of Edna Mahan, a prison in New Jersey, has participated in Freedom Reads activities, a non -profit organization that has been promoting reading in the prisons of the United States since 2020.
“Freedom Reads has brought books on different topics, and it is very important to read it because it makes you wiser,” said Montalvo, 60, in an interview with Telemundo news. “The books change the climate of the prison; they change the way people think about themselves. This opens your mind and makes you want to change.”
Montalvo proudly remembered the arrival of the books to his prison in May.
“They brought two shelves that are very symbolic and very important, because they relate to literature, justice and writers like Martin Luther King,” he said.
The origin of freedom of reading is closely linked to the life of Reginald Dwayne Betts, who declared himself guilty of car theft at age 16 and was sentenced to nine years in the Virginia prison system.
“In prison, I discovered books. I became a poet and also a very good communicator. I could make friends and connections that have lasted decades. The books gave me an understanding of the world,” Betts said in an interview with Telemundo News.
Years later, Betts obtained his lawyer from Yale University, began publishing poetry books and won prestigious Guggenheim and MacArthur scholarships, and in 2020, he was one of the founders of Libertad Reads, where he has worked to increase access to books for the population of the prison of the United States.
Finding reading material is difficult, Betts said. Most facilities have only one library, which is open a few hours a day and requires permission to access it.
“I asked myself: ‘What would a library be?’ And I decided that it would be a collection of 500 books, and I called it the Library of Freedom, because I believe in the idea that freedom begins with a book. ”
Betts worked with architects in Mass Design, a non -profit company focused on the role of architecture in supporting communities and promoting social healing, and decided that the structure of the shelves should be curved. Many of them are built by former inmates, he said.
Libraries themselves are design objects, each of which consists of two to six independent libraries, handmade, walnut or cherry wood. Betts has installed libraries in empty cells to facilitate access and designed each shelf to have 44 inches high so as not to obstruct the vision of the guards. The curves of each reading structure contrast with the hard and angular architecture of the penitentiary system.
“We want to show that it is possible to be kind in places as violent and dangerous as some prisons, and we are projecting our idea with the libraries we do with our own hands,” he said.
Betts read several books in prison that changed his life. One was “one hundred years of loneliness”, by Gabriel García Márquez, who said “he taught [him] To understand Latin America and its people. “
According to figures from the Federal Prison Office, there are 46,334 Hispanic prisoners in the United States. Therefore, since the beginning of the project, bilingualism has been present and the titles in Spanish are abundant.
“We have a list of more than 100 books in Spanish, and continues to grow every year,” said David Pérez, coordinator of the Freedom Reads Library.
According to the organization, the Spanish books in the library’s permanent collection include “The House of Spirits” by Isabel Allende; “I am not your perfect Mexican daughter,” from Sánchez; “At the time of the butterflies,” by Julia Álvarez; and “The Shadow of the Wind”, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, in addition to classics such as García Márquez’s novels and the English works of Ernest Gaines, William Faulkner and George Orwell.
“I am very happy that my novel has reached so many unexpected places. I am proud that imprisoned people find some relief in Julia’s story,” Sanchez said in an email about his book. “It is a complicated protagonist who wants to escape from their circumstances, like many women around the world.”
‘Much work ahead of us’
Maria Montalvo was convicted in 1996 for the death of her two children in a fire in a car, which she said in the trial was an accident; She is fulfilling life imprisonment. During his trial, prosecutors recognized that he was “emotionally disturbed” during the incident, which contributed to the fact that he was not sentenced to death.
Years later, Montalvo says that he has dedicated his time in prison to study the problems of mass imprisonment, read literary works and interact with other inmates in reading circles that discuss books in Spanish and English.
“There are many books in Spanish and English. So you can sit with many of the women who do not speak English and read a book, but at the same time, another group is reading the same book in English, and you can have a conversation later,” he said.
News Telemundo requested figures from the Federal Office of Prisons on the literacy and reading initiatives of its prisons, but did not receive an answer about the data. However, spokesman Scott Taylor said in an email that the office closely monitors reading promotion programs such as Freedom Reads, which “includes regular coordination meetings, staff training on safety expectations and continuous supervision to address any concern.”
In addition, Taylor said, the office of education of the office has implemented a strategy focused on literacy and improving linguistic skills for inmates who do not speak English. “Bilingual instructions and materials are provided in Spanish and English, backed by digital tools that offer accessible resources for those who learn English,” he wrote.
In 2023, the research published by the Mackinac Public Policy Center, a non -profit organization that defends the principles of free market, discovered that reading and education -based education programs reduce the probability of recidivism by 14.8%. It also found an increase of 6.9% in the probability of employment.
“I love having conversations with people within prisons,” Pérez said. “They read a lot and move you when you see them cry because they have read a poem or a novel, it is unique.”
‘Have voice’
Freedom Reads has installed 498 libraries in 50 prisons for adults and young people in the United States. It has placed approximately 280,000 books in the hands of inmates.
“Despite that success, we have probably reached less than 1%, perhaps 0.5%, of prisons in this country,” Betts said. “We are not yet in federal wraps. We are only in 13 states, and we are missing more than 30. Therefore, we have a lot of work ahead.”
Betts’s goal is to have libraries in 20,000 prisons.
Since 2023, Freedom Reads has administered the Inside Literary Prize, a literary prize tried by imprisoned persons. The inaugural award was for the book of Imani Perry “South to America: a trip under the Mason-Dixon to understand the soul of a nation”, selected by more than 200 judges of 12 prisons in six states.
By 2025, the competition had expanded to include more than 300 judges from 13 prisons in five states, and this year’s edition also included Puerto Rico. Montalvo was part of this year’s jury, and his decision will be announced on Thursday.
“It is a feeling of inclusion. It makes you realize that what we think about books and what we read is important,” said Montalvo with enthusiasm. “It’s having a voice.”
An earlier version of this story was first published in Telemundo News.
