Why I’m building libraries inside prisons | Reginald Dwayne Betts

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

Lawyer and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts ate his first mango in solitary confinement. He thought it was an apple until he bit in, and the juice ran down his hands. At the time, he was 16, staring down a nine-year sentence and teaching himself to juggle, to keep himself from losing his mind. But that mango became the seed of an idea that would shape the rest of his life.

Reginald Dwayne Betts (0:35)

That's how prison taught me that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango?

Elise Hu (0:45)

In his talk, he describes what he chose to focus on in that cell and the people he found around him. A boxer who taught him discipline, a man who argued law with him for an hour, the friends he made. He walked out of prison and became a writer and then a lawyer, and then went back again and again for the people still inside.

Reginald Dwayne Betts (1:04)

We put millions of people in prison. I will put millions of books inside when she asks me how.

I say it one library at a time.

Elise Hu (1:15)

Dwayne has since opened more than 600 Freedom Libraries inside prisons across the country, putting the books he once dreamed of reading into other people's hands. And some of the men who taught him how to hope are now handing it out themselves. That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the Day.

Reginald Dwayne Betts (1:41)

I ate my first mango in a hole. With some called a shoe, the box and said, lock up. But no matter what you call solitary confinement, no one expects it to be where you eat your first mango.

And me, I thought the oval-shaped fruit that came with lunch that day was an apple. I've been teaching myself to juggle, to keep from losing my mind. Imagining that I could manage my troubles if I could flow apples into an orbit of my creation. When I sank my teeth into the unfamiliar fragrant fruit, juices ran down my fingertips. I ate until I chipped a tooth, scraping it along the mango seed. I never saw another mango in prison. And I only learned the name of the fruit when I was home and in my mother's kitchen. Before I started juggling, I trashed the mostly rotten apples without a second glance. Then juggling transformed the apples into my way of escape. That's how prison taught me that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango? I got locked up in 1996 I was 16 years old, 5'5, and 125 pounds. I hadn't won a fight since the second grade.

Becoming a brawler overnight wasn't in the cards for me. That's why people often ask me how I survived. What if I say, I survived prison because I believe you can find what you look for, because of what it means to notice the mango, to commit yourself to the possibility of a miracle, even without a name for the wonder? 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 buts. 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. He was not the only one. I remember Mike G. One day, he asked, if you slipped at McDonald's and broke your leg and they had one of those wet floor signs up, could you sue?