How reading can transform your life (w/ Reginald Dwayne Betts)

Chris Duffy (0:03)

This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

Today's episode is all about how to find beauty, even in the most unexpected of places. How can we preserve and nurture our humanity even when we are in a really tough moment? For me, reading books and poetry has always been a source of joy and pleasure, but it's also been a way to understand the world and myself more deeply. In my opinion, there is nothing as great as getting really deep into a fantastic book.

But books aren't just a source of joy. They can also be a lifeline. They can be a way to transport yourself, to escape your current situation. Today's guest, the poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, I know feels much the same way about reading. Reginald is a beautiful writer, but he is also the driving force behind Freedom Reads, a unique organization that brings beautiful, handcrafted bookcases into prisons and quote transforms cell blocks into freedom libraries, end quote. Reginald took his own experience of incarceration and he is trying to change the circumstances of others still inside. He is so many things. He's an incredible poet. He's a distinguished lawyer. He's a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. But to me, above all else, Reginald Dwayne Betts is a human who loves books. And so in a time where people are reading fewer books than ever, we're going to talk about the power and the necessity of reading and of beauty. To get us started, here's a clip from Reginald's TED Talk.

Reginald Dwayne Betts (1:33)

I should thank my judge. After I pled guilty to carjacking, and he sentenced me to nine years in prison, I was certain that I was going home.

I waited for him to tell me it was all a dream. Then he confirmed my intuition. I don't have any illusion that sending you to the penitentiary is going to help.

Do you know what the cruelest word in the English language is?

The preposition, but. The judge said, but, you can go down there and you can make the best of it or not.

I figured the judge was saying that I could choose what I looked for in those sales. Becoming a computer engineer was now out of the question. Earning a college degree from prison was just as unlikely. But because of what the judge said, I thought not only of what I would lose. I was 16 years old planning who I would be when I left. I've loved books since I was a kid. And so, on my sentencing day, I told myself that I would be a writer. In a crucible that is prison, I learned to see other people. I remember Star. We spent months in adjacent cells in a hole. We were both obsessed with stories of our past and with fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings. Books that let us imagine ourselves as people who chose to be heroes instead of villains. He was a boxer. I wasn't. Star taught me what he knew. How to train, how to breathe. How not to let frustration and a lack of discipline turn into something that ends up costing you far more than you can afford to lose.

Chris Duffy (3:48)

We are going to be back with so much more from Reginald Dwayne Betts in just a moment.

And we are back. We are talking with the poet and MacArthur genius Reginald Dwayne Betts about the power and importance of literature and beauty.

Reginald Dwayne Betts (4:15)

Hello. I'm Reginald Dwayne Betts. I'm the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, but I'm mostly a poet.

Chris Duffy (4:22)

With your organization Freedom Reads, you have built 629 micro libraries and prisons around America. What do you think is so important about getting books inside of prisons?

Reginald Dwayne Betts (4:35)

I found that one thing, see people often say something like, I don't really understand what you went through. I don't understand what it means to be in prison. But they forget that the human condition is the human condition.

In literature, a good book is how you connect to things that you've never experienced before. How do I understand something of what Vancouver is? It's because I've read A Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed. That doesn't give me a full and accurate understanding of Canada or Vancouver, but it lets me know how much I don't know. So I would just say the power of a Freedom Library, the power of a book is, it lets you confront the reality that most of us will never know enough people, and we want to. Most of us are finding ways to fight loneliness, and we struggle.