the autobiography of malcolm x barnes and noble

Alex, thanks for joining me.Įddie Conway: Alex, can you just give us an overview of what’s happening in the prison-industrial complex in general?Īlex Skopic: Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Skopic has written an article and has investigated this, and he’s joining me today to tell us what’s happening with books in prison. Reading among slaves have always been banned and forbidden, and now we find that reading in prison is also being banned and curtailed. Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Cameron GranadinoĮddie Conway: Welcome to this episode of Rattling the Bars. His work has appeared in Anthracite Unite, Current Affairs, and Vastarien: A Literary Journal, among other places. Alex Skopic is a freelance writer from Springville, Pennsylvania. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Skopic about the American prison system’s war on reading and its deep (and racist) historical roots. In a recent piece for Protean magazine entitled “ The American Prison System’s War on Reading,” Alex Skopic writes, “Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word-an alarming trend, and one that bears closer examination.” From outright banning books and letting prison libraries fall into decay to the intrusion of for-profit electronic reading services that inmates have to pay for, the assault on prisoners’ ability to read books while incarcerated is one of many calculated cruelties that make the US carceral system so inhumane.

The autobiography of malcolm x barnes and noble