Incarceration, Like Censorship, Deprives Us All

Rai Peterson, BSU English professor and KVML Banned Books Week Prisoner

I am residing this week in the front window of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. My “crime” is having taught banned books, and no one in the U.S.A. goes to prison for that. In some countries, dissident writers and their proponents are harshly punished for writing or publishing seditious content; in the United States, books sometimes are banned, and only in for limited audiences when they conflict with local sexual or religious mores. American books with seditious themes end up on the best-seller list.

Though presidents have tried, sedition laws are generally kept in check by the American populace.  Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against a president or monarch has always been legal in the U.S.A.  Freedom of speech is our most prized right.

A scant-handful of Twitter users have suggested that the KVML and I might be making light of incarceration by using the trope of jail to draw attention to book banning worldwide.  One event can neither solve nor address all of the world’s ills, but since we’ve invoked incarceration with our metaphor, let’s explore that more fully.

Jacqueline Woodson giving a KVML talk with a live feed to Indiana Women’s Prison

First, we each have partnered with Indiana prisons in the past and plan to continue to do so, attempting to ameliorate the suffering of those citizens who are held against their will in our state.  The library has provided a live feed into the Indiana Women’s Prison so that inmates could participate in a book chat with writer Jacqueline Woodson, and a project I lead at Ball State University has made and donated hand-sewn baby books to incarcerated mothers.

Next year’s Banned Books Week at the KVML will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut’s detainment as a prisoner of war, and plans have been underway to collect narratives about incarceration including censorship and book-banning inside of prisons.

Book banning, therefore, is not a distant topic from prisoner’s rights.

Recall the work of Russian dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, which was an

underground text in his own country while it was a best-seller in the United States in 1974.  It could not be legitimately published in the former Soviet Union until 2009. So, while American book club members were soundly condemning Soviet gulags, their prisoners, families, and solidarity activists could only whisper about it.

Here are ten great texts about the prison crisis in the United States, published in the United States. (Note: The first was written by Indianapolis’ own Eldridge Cleaver, himself in prison at the time.)

Etheridge Knight

Let the fact that these texts (by no means an exhaustive list) span 60 years bear witness that the problem has only gotten worse.

 

We all own the prison crisis in the United States right now.  Anyone who has watched Ava DuVernay’s haunting documentary 13th is attuned to the modern-day slavery system resulting from the racial inequalities in policing, sentencing, and incarceration in the U.S.A.  

As Americans, it is our duty to protest wrongful prison sentences until our country figures out that education and economic support, not penance, is the way to cure social ills. So many corrupt systems protect racism in our country that protest cannot solve this overnight.  For starters, here’s a site listing 50 companies you may support that benefit from prison labor.

Michelle Jones, a Ph.D. candidate at New York University, who received her early college education while incarcerated in Indiana Women’s prison is highlighted in this article about activism against mass incarceration.

And here’s what the ACLU, a frequent partner with the KVML is doing nationally about the problem.

There’s nothing funny or trivial about prison, just as there’s nothing comic or droll about a crowd chanting “lock her up” to intimidate a presidential candidate. Prison is more than a metaphor.

Kathi Badertscher, PhD

Director of Graduate Programs at the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
Kathi Badertscher, PhD, is Director of Graduate Programs at the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Dr. Badertscher teaches a variety of BA, MA, and doctoral courses, including Applying Ethics in Philanthropy and History of Philanthropy. She has participated in several Teaching Vonnegut workshops and is a member of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Dr. Badertscher has been a guest speaker on ethics in philanthropy, including at the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners – Indianapolis Council; Association of Fundraising Professionals – Indiana Chapter; and Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China. In 2019 she received IUPUI Office for Women, Women’s Leadership Award for Newcomer Faculty. In 2019 and 2020 she received the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Graduate Teaching Award.
Dr. Badertscher’s publications include “Fundraising for Advocacy and Social Change,” co-authored with Shariq Siddiqui in Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, 5th ed., 2022; “Insulin at 100: Indianapolis, Toronto, Woods Hole, and the ‘Insulin Road,’ co-authored with Christopher Rutty, Pharmacy in History (2020); and three articles in the Indiana Magazine of History: “A New Wishard Is on the Way,” “Evaline Holliday and the Work of Community Service,” and “Social Networks in Indianapolis during the Progressive Era.” Her chapters on social welfare history will appear in three upcoming edited volumes on the history of philanthropy, including “The Legacy of Edna Henry and Her Contributions to the IU School of Social Work,” Women at Indiana University: Views of the Past and the Future, edited by Andrea Walton, Indiana University Press, 2022 (forthcoming). Dr. Badertscher is also the Philanthropy and Nonprofits Consulting Editor for the forthcoming Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, edited by David J. Bodenhamer and Elizabeth Van Allen, Indiana University Press, 2021. Dr. Badertscher is an active volunteer in the Indianapolis community. At present, she is a Coburn Place Safe Haven Board Member and a Children’s Bureau/Families First Brand and Marketing Advisor. Dr. Badertscher holds the MA in History from Indiana University and the MA and PhD in philanthropic studies from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

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