LGBT Books to Prisoners program uses literature to connect inmates to community

LGBT Books to Prisoners operates out of the Rainbow Bookstore on Gilman Street (Jennifer Gragg/Madison Commons).LGBT Books to Prisoners is an organization that delivers in more ways than one. The books that volunteers send are accompanied by something that they say doesn’t need a postage stamp – a sense of community.

The organization’s founder, Dennis Bergren, convinced the Wisconsin Books to Prisoners organization to begin including LGBT reading material in 2006. After recognizing the growing need for this type of material, Bergren moved this section of Wisconsin Books to Prisoners into his own home and created a new organization – LGBT Books to Prisoners.

In 2013, Bergren passed the organization on to other volunteers, and LGBT Books to Prisoners relocated to the basement of the Rainbow Bookstore on 426 West Gilman Street.

Today the organization is funded by donations and run solely by volunteers. The volunteers estimate that they have delivered books to approximately 3,500 prisoners. In 2014 alone, they sent 1,908 packages. They do occasionally share resources with Wisconsin Books to Prisoners, which also has its headquarters in the basement of Rainbow Bookstore, but the two organizations are mostly independent of each other.

The process begins when the volunteers, who run the organization, receive written requests for certain books by LGBT prisoners. They then fill the requests as closely as they can with their supply of donated books and mail them to the prisoners.

This process is often very personal – an aspect that began with Bergren’s involvement in the organization.

“He [Bergren] eventually started running a project just to serve LGBT inmates out of his own home,” said Katherine Charek Briggs, a co-organizer at LGBT Books to Prisoners. “He used his own money for postage and built really strong relationships with a lot of the inmates. He sustained that for a long time.”

Though the number of volunteers has increased since then, this intimacy was never lost.

“There’s a certain assumption from the inmates who are writing to us that the people who are listening are friendly and in community,” Charek Briggs said. “A lot of people share their stories with us in ways that they can’t necessarily share with others in their prison or jail. We don’t have a pen pal service, but people do write to us. I’m not sure that people would do that as much if it felt like a more anonymous process.”

Often, the books themselves play a large role in this intimacy.

“There’s just something about suggesting books to people and trying to fulfill their need through fiction, like movies or music, that can be very personal,” said Teresa Nguyen, a co-organizer at LGBT Books to Prisoners. “When you hit something that really resonates with them, like a perfect book that they got, I think that means a lot.”

Beyond the relationships that they themselves create with the prisoners, the volunteers also acknowledge the connections these books can create between prisoners.

“When they finish their books they pass them on to others,” Nguyen said. “It’s bigger than that one person getting the books. It just spreads across to other inmates.”

These connections become especially important when one considers the limited opportunities for community building that exist among LGBT prisoners.

“There are other books to prisoners services but maybe not other ones where people know they can ask for gender/sexuality related material,” Charek Briggs said. “It’s a way to help address a need.”

And they do address this need, one book request at a time.