The drop of literacy in children has been a popular topic of concern since the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person school for almost two years. 12th-grade reading scores are at a 30-year low, which has yet to rebound post-shutdown. Beyond this, there are also signs of a broader cultural shift away from reading. According to a Gallup poll, American adults read 20% less than they did in 2016, and among college graduates, this number is close to 30%. This drop is exacerbated when only looking at reading for pleasure, which encompasses any form of reading done for purposes other than work or school. A study done by researchers at University College London and the University of Florida found that reading for pleasure has declined more than 40% in the last 20 years. Co-author Dr. Jill Sonke theorized the cause of this trend.

“Our digital culture is certainly part of the story,” Sonke said. “But there are also structural issues — limited access to reading materials, economic insecurity and a national decline in leisure time.”

I’ve known about these trends for a while, and as someone for whom reading is a central pastime, I find them concerning. Many of my peers don’t read outside of class, and I feel a lack of people in my life to talk about books with. Unexpectedly, this lack was alleviated when I started volunteering and taking classes in the Washington State Penitentiary (WSP). In my experience talking to and connecting with people in various units of WSP, one through-line between everyone I meet is how much they read. To be frank, almost all of my current reading list comes from incarcerated people I’ve talked to — and their book recommendations have not disappointed.

In a conversation with me, John Radavich, a creative writer, self-described nerd and inmate at the Washington State Penitentiary, talked to me about his relationship with reading. While his reading list is far too immense to properly quantify, I asked him to name a couple of his favorite works.

“Lightbringer, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Stormlight Archive. I read hours a day, everyday.”

John told me he had been a lifelong reader, mostly fantasy with a little bit of non-fiction sprinkled in. But once he was incarcerated, reading took on a particular importance for him. In an institution like prison, reading can offer solace.

“We read for a moderate amount of learning and escapism,” Radavich said. “There is something unique about entering another world through books.”

Anyone who loves reading knows that there is no analog for the way a book sucks you in, makes you forget about everything around you — this becomes especially important when you’re surrounded by concrete walls and barbed fences. 

What Radavich stressed to me, and a trend I’ve noticed in all my conversations about reading in WSP, is the dual role reading serves in the penitentiary. It is both a solitary activity, which removes you both mentally and physically from the violence of incarceration, while also serving as a vehicle to develop oneself. For the men I interviewed, beyond other forms of media or pop culture, reading is a distinct resistance to the stagnation that often harangues incarcerated people. When your own dehumanization is made clear to you by your environment — your vision is always backdropped by concrete and metal — purposeful pursuit of learning is an act of defiance.

Lewis “Tree” Treven, another inmate in WSP, spends a significant chunk of each day bettering himself through reading. In our conversations, he told me he reads an astonishing four to five hours a day, most of which is dedicated to self-improvement. He described his reading diet to me. 

“I don’t focus on any one specific genre. Usually I just read whatever speaks to me or whatever I’m interested in learning about,” Treven said. “Recently, I’ve been into books about the financial world.” 

In our conversation, we talked primarily about why Treven read and what he got from reading. To this end, he stressed one quote from “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason, which elucidated his approach to reading.

“Success means accomplishments as the result of our own efforts and abilities. Proper preparation is the key to our success. Our thinking can be no wider than our understanding.” 

Treven tied this back to his own life, particularly his intent behind reading.

“For me, reading is about self-awareness, pushing myself to the limits of my imagination and beyond. Becoming a better me,” Treven said.

More so than anyone I talked with, Treven stressed how reading was part of his preparation for reentry. He sees books as equipping him with the skills necessary to succeed once he is back on “the outside.”

Toney Tyson, an activist and inmate at WSP, approaches reading with a similar perspective to Treven. For Tyson, reading is about gaining knowledge so that he can benefit his community. Except in his case, it’s on a much larger scale.

As a self-described queer-black-autonomous revolutionary, Tyson spends his hours reading esoteric political theory, histories of social movements and black and queer revolutionary literature. It should be no surprise then that Tyson’s favorite author is Franz Fanon — the now canonical revolutionary famous for his foundational political writings focusing on colonialism and the experience of black people globally. An author whose arguments — which most humanities majors at Whitman will attest — are famously complex, hard to follow and rewarding when given proper time.

While Tyson’s current tastes are deeply academic, he didn’t always have a reading list that puts most college courses to shame. Incarcerated at 16, Tyson didn’t finish high school before he was sentenced. At the time, this severely stunted his reading level.

“I never read in high school or when I was on the streets, I spent large portions in the IMU, adding up to four years. Reading was a lifeline,” Tyson said.

The IMU (Intensive Management Unit), often referred to as “the hole”, or solitary confinement, is a form of punishment designed around isolation. It’s deeply inhuman, cruel and for Tyson, an opportunity to study.

“I started off small, reading a lot of romance novels, Harry Potter, stuff like that. My first look into the movement was during COVID-19 — I found some essays by Emma Goldman and Peter Koproptkin,” Tyson said. “From then on I started researching anarchism and revolutionary movements. I built up my reading level, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I read Angela Davis, George Jackson… I looked at who they read and cited, followed the pyramid. And eventually, of course, everyone cites Fanon.”

I also talked with Shane Chamberlain, a community builder and inmate at WSP. His reading diet reflects an interest in poetry and philosophy — in essence, any subject matter that deeply interrogates the human experience.

“Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot…I love to read their poetry, but also their letters. There is so much to learn through looking at how they communicate with people,” Chamberlain said. “Also, regarding philosophy, I love reading metaphysics, trying to get to the heart of love, passion, compassion, sorrow.”

Beyond the sheer enjoyment anyone is guaranteed to get from reading the works of the modernist poets he listed, Chamberlain also described a personal value that reading brings for him.

“It takes me out of myself, but also brings me closer to myself. What I mean is it helps me understand who I am and where I’m going,” Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain is deeply invested in self-discovery as an internal goal and as a practice he wants to share with others. He, along with other volunteers, has been developing a course designed to help people better explore their own thoughts through writing and to help them better understand themselves through select readings in philosophy.

“Storytelling is how we communicate, we cannot tell the same story over and over again, which is what happens here. Entering into the stories of other lives that have lived, that is how I fulfill my life story,” Chamberlain said. “It reminds me that I’m connected, that I share the same life force. It reminded me that I could reach the same level as the people I read, that I could be like that.”

Dehumanization is a particularly pernicious condition. It is self-justifying, as in framing someone as less than human (or as a human we ought to treat as lesser), you also remove any need to question if that’s how a human should be treated, because in our conscience, they are no longer one. I think Chamberlain is right — storytelling, despite whatever narrative people have about those who have committed crimes, reminds us of our shared humanity.