Meet Siri, Featured Volunteer for April 2026!

What got you interested in BTP to begin with, or what made you start volunteering? Does it tie in to the rest of your life in any meaningful way?

Last spring, I heard that BTP was experiencing a backlog in responding to letters after the move to their current location. After reading more about their work, I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer for many reasons. Back in college, I had interned at an organization that provided access to higher education classes and tutoring to people incarcerated in a nearby state prison. Later on, a large part of my personal and professional life began to revolve around disability. I soon learned how disabled people are vastly overrepresented in state and federal prisons and the interconnectedness between disability justice and abolition movements. So once I learned about BTP’s work, I was eager to support the organization in whatever way I could. Now, I am collaborating with many generous volunteers at BTP to conduct my graduate school research on informal learning and community building at BTP.

Is there anything you especially like about volunteering with us? What are your favorite parts of the process?

To me, what is best about the process is whenever we are able to directly meet the stated needs of the people who write to us. Though sending books is a small service, when we have the exact sci-fi title somebody was looking for, are able to send along a textbook that is a good match for the educational or career goals someone describes to us, or when we have enough manga, drawing guides, and composition notebooks available on our shelves to send along to whoever requests it, it feels like small, positive steps towards counteracting the deprivation and dehumanization people inside describe facing.

In a personal way, as a lover of books, being in the physical volunteer space is always a nice feeling. My beloved late grandmother was a librarian who inspired my love of reading, and every time I’m in a place surrounded by books it feels like she is near. So BTP has always felt like a good place to be.

Everybody starts off by responding to letters, even if they eventually move on to wrapping or other tasks. Some of the letters can be memorable. Are there any requests that surprised you, or that you remember standing out in any way?

Unfortunately, the letters that stand out in my memory are the ones that highlight the injustices people face in the prison system. I’ve responded to many letters where the requester was asking for a book from us in an attempt to fill a gap in services their prison or jail were failing to provide. For example, I’ve seen letters from folks who were looking for resources on treating specific diseases because prison health services were denying or neglecting to treat them. I’ve also responded to several letters from individuals who have been kept in solitary confinement for years and years, and still more from folks seeking resources for mental health support or techniques.

In the time that you’ve been here, do you think that your views on the prison system, or what it’s like to be incarcerated, have changed? Please feel free to talk about those views if you would like.

Absolutely - I think I feel that way after every volunteer shift. With each letter I read I learn a little bit more - about the prison system, about a person’s experience, about what it takes for BTP to navigate federal, state, and local restrictions to provide access to even basic reading material and information that every person should have access to. I’ve learned (and will continue to learn, I expect) about the extent to which the prison system creates and amplifies cycles of suffering for individuals, families, and communities. Any illusions I had of prisons being sites of potential rehabilitation have absolutely fallen away and been replaced with a clearer understanding of how such institutions are places of tremendous, corrosive harm both to individuals and our society as a whole.

Do you have any book recommendations for us? Is there anything you especially like to read in your spare time?

I heartily recommend the work of Rabih Alameddine - The Wrong End of the Telescope and The True True Story of Raja the Gullible are now all-time favorites for me. I’d also recommend A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. I read it to understand the craft of the short story better, but came away with a lot more.  I’ve recently been on more of speculative and science fiction kick, and enjoyed/can recommend the Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, as well pretty much anything Octavia Butler ever wrote.

Are there any other parting words that you’d like to share with whoever is reading this?

In addition to supporting BTP, please check out initiatives like the Prison Journalism Project and PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program to support first-person stories and reporting from those impacted by the prison system!