In keeping with old traditions, departments of corrections across the country continue to suppress the purchases and possession of book titles that prisoners read. It is a throwback to the time when African slaves were forbidden from learning to read, a crime punishable by death.

In some California prisons, possession of the “wrong” book could result in a prisoner receiving a write-up for a rule violation. In a worst-case scenario, such possession may place a target on a prisoner’s back — a type of scarlet letter that signifies gang affiliation.

Even so, books admonish me to read because of two important quotes from history. After the Jewish Holocaust, their mantra became “Never forget.” Then there is the quote by George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As new books are published each year, specific titles are considered contraband once they fall under the scrutiny of prison authorities who censor what their captives read. Think of it as the state’s hybrid mindset of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire.

The first book is a fictional story about a society in which the government outlaws reading by burning books. The latter describes the “banking theory of education,” a process where the oppressor makes “deposits” into the mind of the oppressed. 

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,” said Steven Bikko, of the African National Congress. Bikko’s statement is one measure of the foundation that explains why prison authorities ban books. More often than not, the label “contraband” is merely a smoke screen created by overseers to mask some truths.

A person receives two educations. The first is obtained through public or private educational institutions. The second, and perhaps the most important, is the education acquired through one’s volition. In prison, the latter is done by reading, which requires time — something all prisoners have and would be wise to not waste.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains its Centralized List of Disapproved Publications, which is codified in the California Code of Regulations (Title 15, Section 3134.1). Although prisoners may read the regulations, the list of banned books is not comprehensive, nor is it readily available. 

Last year, a change in the law made it a requirement of the Office of the Inspector General to post the CDCR’s banned book list on a website. News flash: Prisoners do not have direct access to the Internet.

After I read a couple of books last year, I discovered the books were on the CDCR’s list of disapproved publications. I did not lose any sleep over it, though, because there was no way I could have known the books were banned. I learned that news when I read my subscriptions to San Francisco Bay View and All Of Us Or None.

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, by Orisanmi Burton, is banned in California and in several other states. It supposedly advocates lawlessness, violence, anti-government behavior, blah, blah, blah. 

I read Tip of the Spear, and if anything, it reveals the history and illegal tactics used by government to repress organizations such as the Inmates Liberation Front, the Black Liberation Army, and of course the Black Panther Party. Some unlawful methods used were orchestrated by the CIA’s Operation CHAOS, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s Counter-Intelligence Program.

“A close reading of Tip of the Spear will reveal that it advocates only that people think in radically different ways about the historical role of prisons in U.S. Society,” Burton wrote in an open letter. “I reject the notion that my book ‘advocates … lawlessness, violence, anarchy, or rebellion against governmental authority,’ or that it ‘incites disobedience,’ as was claimed in a memo from New York prison officials.”

Burton’s bold research and writing is what I call factual contraband. It is a counter-narrative and withdrawal of the “deposits” in the minds of the oppressed. He provides modern-day prisoners with a window into the past; a view they may juxtapose with their present conditions of confinement. 

What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly? That is not a question. It is the title of another book banned by the CDCR. Guess what? I read it too. I also met the author, Dorsey Nunn, on one of his visits to San Quentin. His book is a memoir, which he begins by discussing how the law and discrimination set the trajectory of his life.

“Agreements written down on paper in plain ink had kept Black people and other minorities from buying into certain neighborhoods,” Nunn wrote. “California had more of those so-called ‘racially restrictive housing covenants’ than any other state.”

Not surprisingly, Nunn entered prison at a young age. In chapter two of his book, titled “Gladiator School,” he described Deuel Vocational Institute in the early 1970s. His story solidified in my mind the long-established tales told to me by other prisoners forced to become gladiators at DVI. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, some motives to justify banning Nunn’s book, “…tells of an inmate making a weapon.” Recall the title of chapter two. Another story discusses an officer’s death, which did not implicate Nunn, and “The third describes how Nunn once ‘traded in marijuana.’” All true. I read it, cover to cover.

Like Burton, though, Nunn reveals a fact about the prison system that goes beyond embarrassment. It is an indictment of the system that I could not shake, where he writes, “You can’t have a gladiator fight without a Roman in charge. And true enough, it was DVI guards who stirred up the sh**, spreading rumors, passing whispered lies and truths in the ears of prisoners like unpinned grenades… We were gladiators, forced to entertain the Romans. And the Romans were the pigs and the entire system that put them in charge.”

While incarcerated, I have read hundreds of books. Because of that, I have had to fight the Romans due to their nomadic scarlet letter, always in search of a victim. It took me eight years of filing grievances and litigation to extricate myself from their contemptible narrative. 

My First Amendment right was attacked because of my unconventional political views, or as Nunn fittingly wrote, “…the more politicized we became, the more we were punished.” The federal case, Sawyer v. Chappell, et al. (Northern District Court), settled the matter after a reversal in Sawyer v. MacDonald, et al. (U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit).

Before my settlement, I wrote about my reading in a poem: “All that George, Huey, Mao, and Che, could land me in Pelican Bay…” I read because it furnishes my mind with greater independence and freedom of thought, so brainwashing by the prison industrial complex does not take root. 

Jack Henry Abbott described it well in his breakthrough book, In The Belly Of The Beast, where he wrote: “Every minute for years you are forced to believe that your suffering is a result of your ‘ill behavior,’ that it is self-inflicted. You are indoctrinated to blindly accept anything done to you…That is why they now have ‘education programs’ in prison… so we learn only what they want us to learn.”

Slaves were never supposed to learn to read. This captive did, though, because my generation was educated on the outrageous sentiment of racists who said, “If you want to hide something from a ni**er, put it a book.”