Books to Prison: Giving the Incarcerated the Gift of Knowledge

Getting books to the incarcerated has long suffered many problems, and things got even more challenging during the pandemic. There are dozens of programs in the United States that work to establish prison libraries to ensure the incarcerated population gets access to books. Most of these programs are supported by donors and volunteers. Carrying out the program is not an easy task since prison systems have varying and ever-changing rules.

Why are the Books to Prison Initiatives so Important

The program’s goal is to transform the role of libraries in the lives of the incarcerated. Many people in prisons will go back to the community, and they need to be able to thrive. Getting these books and education is a vital step to reentering society.

Also, like other people, anyone in prison has a right to education and entertainment. Many activists are fighting to improve the prisons’ conditions, and getting books into the prison is a crucial step. Libraries lower the recidivism rates. According to the Department of Corrections, even basic education may decrease recidivism.

Prison libraries also reduce idleness. Inmates spend quality time reading books. In most cases, idleness leads to involvement in destructive behaviors and violence, and it is most rampant in prisons. Hence, the books to prison initiative help inmates utilize their time studying and reading.

Inmates also get a chance to understand state and federal law through law books and other legal publications. The knowledge they get from the law books helps them receive fair and just judgment or treatment. Some inmates have used the knowledge to overturn their convictions which could not have been possible without prison libraries.

Giving Incarcerated Population the Gift of Reading

A new law school library’s initiative is giving the inmates the pleasure of reading books. The Yale Law School Library program is one of the initiatives that is affording this privilege to inmates. The program that started in 2020 was halted by the COVID-19 but resumed in late February 2022.

The Yale Law Library program led by Julian Aiken, assistant director for Law Library’s access and faculty services, has donated more than 1,300 books to various prisons and correctional centers. Aiken started the books to prison initiative after inspiration from (at that time) a law Ph.D. candidate, Dwayne Betts. Betts was a former prison inmate who understood better a sense of freedom after reading poems while in prison.

Aiken’s first book donation was to the Cheshire Correctional Institute, where 700 books were given. According to Aiken, the initiative delivered recent casebooks to help inmates with appeals and other legal questions. With the help of the senior administrative assistant at Yale Law School, Miriam Benson, the initiative continues to grow. The program has expanded to other local jails, including women’s shelters and homeless service providers in New Haven. Apart from prisons, shelters for domestic violence victims in Ansonia, CT, have benefited from the book’s initiative.

According to the Law Librarian and law professor Femi Cadmus, the books to prison initiative is just one way of breaking the barriers to literacy and access to information, even for inmates. Since they are intended to be temporary living spaces, many prisons have no books for the inmates. People in prisons also have no resources to buy books. That’s why prison libraries are the only way they have to access knowledge and entertainment.

Most Challenged Books of 2021 

The American Library Association recently released its annual State of America’s Libraries Report, detailing the top 10 most challenged books in 2021. Below are the books and the reasons for their bans:

1. Gender Queer: Maia Kobabe

Maia Kobabe writes a memoir about eir journey of self-discovery and life experiences. This story is told in a graphic and detailed manner. It was banned for the graphic sexual content found in the book, with the inclusion of personal sexual experiences.

2. Lawn Boy: Jonathan Evison

Written as a semi-autobiography, Jonathan Evision details the life experiences of Mike Munoz, a young Mexican American who goes through a journey of self-discovery, dealing gender-identity that are coupled with the existing challenge of adolescence and self-identity. The novel also touches on racial prejudices that a brown person experiences in America. This novel was banned by many schools and challenged by parents due to the amount of obscenities and sexual content found.

3. All Boys Aren’t Blue: George M Johnson

Written by journalist Geore M Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue is a personal memoir about the challenges that a black queer boy experiences in the society of America. George M Johnson’s story related to many young queer adults who are going through a similar experience. It was banned due to its LGBTQI+ content and explicit content and language.

4. Out of Darkness: Ashley Hope Perez

This novel is one of historical nature in which the author focuses on the romantic relationship between a teenage Mexican American girl and a teenage African American boy in the early 1900s. Challenges from parents and bans from school came because of the sexual content and physical abuse illustrated in the book.

5. The Hate U Give: Angie Thomson

Angie Thomson tells the story a 16-year-old African American girl who witnesses a police officer kill her childhood friend. It’s major themes are police brutality and the racial prejudices in America. It was banned as educational bodies believed that it promoted a certain social and slightly political agenda.

6. The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian: Sherman Alexie

A 1st person perspective of Native American teenager, detailing his childhood. The author touches on bullying, racism and violence. It has been consistently challenged over the last decade due to the presence of homophobic slurs and the amount of violence present in the book.

7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl: Jesse Andrews

A book that received a film adaptation, this novel focuses on the relationship between three high school seniors and the tribulations that they face. The novel faced much criticism due to its misogynistic nature and sexual content.

8. The Bluest Eye: Toni Morrison

A fictional tale of an 11-year-old African American girl, the bluest eye gives an eye-opening perspective of life from a girl who experiences abuse in its different forms. Parents and educational bodies have found the book to be inappropriate due to its sexual content.

9. This Book is Gay: Juno Dawson

As an informative guide, this book aims to educate young people about the LGBTQ community as well as sexual identity. It was banned and challenged for those particular reasons.

10. Beyond Magenta: Susan Kuklin

Susan Kuklin interviews six people that identify as transgender and gender-neutral. These interviews give insight on the experiences of people of the LGBTQI+ community. Parents called for the book to be banned due to the LGBTQI+ content and nature.

ALA will continue to advocate for free speech by launching an “Unite Against Book Bans” campaign.

10 Must-Watch Movies Streaming in April

As the year turns to April, many excellent new movie releases are available to stream on various platforms. However, finding the movie that best suits your needs on streaming services may be overwhelming. This article delved through the collection to compile a selection of ten of the best movies accessible for streaming in April, ranging from classics to recent releases.

Netflix

Her

“Her” is a sci-fi romantic thriller starred by Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Theodore Twombly, who falls for an artificial intelligence operating system, Samantha. Spike Jonze’s artistic tribute to the interlocking influences of love and technology, set in an unsettling future, is a comic and touching encounter whose clarity will linger with you even after the movie ends.

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood

In the stunning rotoscope animation style of Richard Linklater, Apollo 10½ tells the history of the first lunar landing mission from two viewpoints: the astronaut and command center and a Texas kid following as it all unfolds on TV. The movie is based on Linklater’s personal experiences and acts as a soothing, often provocative glimpse of 1960s America.

Inception

This April, Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending film “Inception” returns to the screens. Leonardo DiCaprio helms the cast as a sad widower charged with penetrating a billionaire’s brain to commit a dream robbery. The movie’s intricate dream-diving concept makes watching extremely satisfying.

Nightcrawler

“Nightcrawler” is Dan Gilroy’s harrowing depiction of greed, morality, and ethics, starred by Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Lou Bloom, a freelance video journalist. The robber-turned-journalist captures the attention of a local Los Angeles TV news outfit hungry for lurid content with his recordings of crime scenes.

Hulu

Eyes Wide Shut

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play husband and wife in a crisis in Stanley Kubrick’s erotic psychological drama. Cruise becomes fascinated with seeking his random sexual encounters outside of marriage after the wife confesses to having desires about a serviceman she met over a year ago. The movie is a beautiful blend of overwhelming stateliness and occasionally great intimacy.

Compliance

“Compliance,” Craig Zobel’s spine-chilling thriller, explores issues concerning the atrocity of authority, the police mentality, women exploitation, and consent. The movie is centered on the true story of a man who pretended to be a policeman over the phone and persuaded restaurant management to conduct illegal treatments on an employee.

Looper

“Looper,” an action-thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Joe, tells the story of a hitman working for a crime syndicate who time-travels back to execute his future self (Bruce Willis). The movie is an intriguing and profoundly captivating action drama with a core that matches the concepts that power it.

Prime Video

Con Air

“Con Air” is an action-thriller that stars Nicolas Cage, who plays Cameron Poe, a recently paroled and former Army Ranger. Poe helps authorities reclaim a flight taken over by prisoners following a prison break onboard.

HBO Max

The Raid: Redemption

This action film significantly revolutionized the game and impacted many subsequent entries in the genre, notably the John Wick franchise. Iko Uwais plays a novice recruit of a special force charged with penetrating a high-rise building and bringing down a brutal drug kingpin. This movie is still one of the most exhilarating, imaginative, and brilliant action films in 2022 and is a must-see for this genre enthusiasts.

Beetlejuice

“Beetlejuice” is based on a couple, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, that perish in a car crash and become ghosts locked within their home, where they are doomed to witness its selling and makeover by a sleazy city family. The movie offers a vibrant and creative take on the afterlife, with a darkly humorous twist on the living dead.

Warner Bros. is Becoming an Entertainment Giant Again

The Fall of Golden-Age Hollywood Studios

By 2018, nearly every studio from the golden era of Hollywood had been overrun by outside influences. For decades, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had been thrown around by unscrupulous owners, never completely recovering. Columbia Pictures was sold in 1982 to Coca-Cola and later to Sony in 1989. Universal had survived five hostile takeover attempts during a 21-year period. Sumner Redstone, a struggling company, had stripped mined Paramount Pictures for cash.

Warner Bros. was the sole bastion of Hollywood, a beige-walled stronghold of filmmakers led by officials with entrenched Hollywood expertise.

AT&T Revives Warner Bros.’s Hopes of Dominating Entertainment Once Again

AT&T acquired Warner Bros. in June 2018 as part of a move to “bring a fresh perspective to how the media and entertainment firm operates”, as AT&T’s then-CEO Randall L. Stephenson phrased it at the time. AT&T chopped and burned its way through Warner Bros.’s ranks, installing CEOs with little or no Hollywood expertise in a bid to create a service like that of Netflix. They reduced expenses, stunning stars with unexpected distribution choices, and forced Warner to behave more like a technology firm than an entertainment one: This is the future!

Warner Bros. was divested by AT&T to Discovery Inc. as part of a $43 billion deal.

The 99-year-old film studio, which produced Harry Potter, Batman, and Bugs Bunny, will now refocus on its historic sweet spot as an entertainment corporation, or so Hollywood’s newest tycoon has pledged. David Zaslav, Discovery’s chief executive, will lead the new firm, which will be branded Warner Bros. Discovery, with no little degree of significance.

Message from David Zaslav

According to Mr. Zaslav, the CEO of Discovery, success is about artistic skill, both in front of the screen and behind the screen, and about struggling and struggling to establish a culture that supports that artistic imaginative and psychic. For the better part of the last year, he has waxed lyrical about the studio’s illustrious heritage, regularly paying honor to Jack, Harry, Sam, and Albert Warner, the brothers who started it all.

Mr. Zaslav expressed his desire to “dream big and dream daringly” in an e-mail to his new team. “Hallelujah,” a Warner Bros. supervisor wrote in a subsequent text message. Another studio executive, speaking on the phone, stated she was on a crazy spending spree for a good time, adding that Hollywood is once again a baby.

The Takeover has also been Met by Criticism

Others, on the other hand, were less enthusiastic. Mr. Zaslav is a leisure expert, having spent 15 years running Discovery, a cable television juggernaut, and before working at NBCUniversal. He does, however, lack film knowledge. Additionally, the acquisition carries a staggering amount of debt — almost $55 billion — that must be paid down as content prices climb. Mr. Zaslav may need to make some difficult decisions about asset allocation. How much money should be invested in film production and promotion? To what extent should a studio produce pictures for a one-time theatrical release? Should the primary objective be expanded to include film distribution for HBO Max, the company’s streaming service?

Hollywood as a whole is in the same frame of mind, exuberant one minute and gloomy the next. There is an indication that the theater industry is finally recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. The PG-rated “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” grossed a massive $71 million in North America over the weekend, the highest opening total for a film made by Paramount since 2014