The following is a guest blog post, under the series “Rene Records”–Rene is currently incarcerated in a federal prison in Alabama. Please consider giving to her commissary fundraiser (funds are also used to support her reading group and fellow political prisoners). You can also support her boo here, as well as her co-defendant Cody, here. The best method of support for her other co-defendant, MJ, is to send donations to $JohnLungaho on CashApp.
I suggested Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison for our book club and the girls are very interested! I’m excited. Our first book was Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (the discussions on this one were heated, but really insightful) and we’re currently working on Kindred by Octavia Butler.
We meet every Friday. I’ve been passing around my copies of Octavia’s Parables Series to the girls, and some of them have been reading it independently, and they love it. My friends want to continue the book club after I go, I’ve already given them the contact info for Midwest Books to Prisoners, and my own contact info so I can help them too if needed.
The programming here is very bare bones and the staff is really apathetic and unhelpful, so anything we want, we have to do it completely ourselves. Organizing this little group has been very fulfilling for me and for the friends who are helping me and it’s personally made my time here easier.
Rene is a queer Korean journalist, sex worker, political prisoner and beloved comrade. You can find her writing at Autostraddle • Truthout • ThoughtCatalog • Arkansas Public Media • and KUAR.