By Kai Bannon
If the bones of a prison are its walls and structures, a well-functioning library is its heart and soul, pumping knowledge, inspiration, and creativity throughout the institution. In a place that primarily subsists on blood and canard, the library is an often tiny oasis. In a world completely without the internet or access to reliable information of any kind, the library is the one place knowledge can be found.
Bringing literacy to an oppressed minority, most of whom have middle school reading and writing abilities, is an act of revolution—and revolution by its very nature is opposed by those in power. It is for this reason that many prison libraries are sad, empty affairs, their arteries clogged with the cholesterol of administrative malevolence.
This is not the case in Jamestown, California, primarily due to the work of one man, Mr. Ludwig. If there is a royal order of librarians, he is a Knight of the First Order. For the last five years, he has managed to run a top-notch library. He has achieved this despite the fact that he has been allocated precisely zero dollars from the Inmate Welfare Fund with which to purchase books.
To comprehend the magnitude of this accomplishment, you must understand that a prison library has a high rate of inventory loss. Its clients are, after all, thieves and criminals. Before you judge us too harshly, imagine you are halfway through your favorite book when, without warning, you’re told you are transferring to another prison, which likely won’t have the book. Imagine your job is working in the kitchen scullery, and you’re paid fifteen cents an hour. 55% of which is taken to pay restitution and court fees. To purchase the book and pay shipping ($18), you’d have to wash more than 100,000 trays. Imagine this book is the only thing you possess that brings you joy or excitement. The characters are the only friends who have never abandoned you; the plucky boy wizard, the only example of selflessness and courage you’ve ever witnessed; Sam’s example of loyalty, the only time you’d ever seen someone choose to support someone as they descend into Mordor.
Imagine by the time anyone notices, you and your favorite book will be gone. So yes, like the girl in the novel of a similar name, many of us are book thieves.
How do you run a successful library, given these challenges? If Mr. Ludwig is any example, you scour the state on your own time, at your own expense, looking for municipal library discards. You solicit book donations while at the same time fending off those who would use the library as a dumping ground for badly out-of-date textbooks and other unwanted material.
You nurture a love of reading and libraries by reaching deep into the bones of the institution by publishing a little synopsis of new acquisitions in the prison housing units. By hiring incarcerated people who love books and who shepherd others to stories that speak to them. By hiring inmate clerks who know how to find things in the law library. By being kind to people who aren’t shown kindness. You do it by being a Knight in the Order of Librarians.
My favorite memory of him takes place in the early days of the pandemic before vaccines were available. He stood, masked and gloved, in front of the shuttered library, passing books and stimulus information through the chain link fence to all of us. The officers, most of whom make too much money to qualify for the stimulus, were less than thrilled, and they made their opinions known. He stood there all day, in the coldness of their stares, and, I imagine afterward, he had a long walk to his car in the parking lot.
His accomplishments are impressive, but perhaps his most extraordinary feat is doing it for people who don’t appreciate him because they do not know and cannot understand the tremendous management challenges he has to overcome.
We are, after all, just learning to read.