The Spirit Collective

Incarceration. Purpose. Freedom. From Prison to Yale: Reginald Dwayne Betts on Second Chances

• Ariane de Bonvoisin • Season 1 • Episode 7

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What does it mean to find freedom inside a prison cell? Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, author, lawyer, Yale Law School graduate, MacArthur Fellow, and Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization bringing books to people in prison while advancing prison and criminal justice reform. After spending nine years in prison—including fourteen months in solitary confinement—he transformed his life through introspection, books, poetry, and found his purpose.

In this episode of The Spirit Collective, host Ariane de Bonvoisin sits down with Dwayne for a rare and deeply moving conversation about second chances, books as liberation, the hand of God in an unlikely life, wonder as a spiritual practice, and why tomorrow will always be better. It's a powerful conversation about freedom, beauty, and what it means to chase awe in the darkest of places.

What We Cover:

  • Growing up without a formal faith—and finding wonder and awe as his own version of spirituality
  • The night everything changed—the carjacking at sixteen that sent him to prison as an adult
  • Fourteen months in solitary confinement and the inner dialogue that kept him going
  • The book slid under his cell door that changed the course of his life
  • How a secret prison library—books travelling in pillowcases along sheets strung between cells—became a lifeline
  • Why he chose to become a writer in a holding cell the day he was sentenced
  • How books in prison became a kind of freedom—and a way to immerse himself in a thousand other stories besides his own
  • The hand of God—the chance conversation at Harvard Law School that ultimately led him to Yale Law School
  • Freedom Reads—the mission to bring books into prisons by placing a library in every cell block in America
  • From prison to Yale Law School, the MacArthur Fellowship, and a life rebuilt through literature
  • Synchronicity, karma, past lives, and soulmates—Dwayne's deeply personal relationship with life's biggest questions
  • What beauty looks like inside a prison—and why looking for it is an active daily practice
  • Why vulnerability means being willing to talk even when you don't have the answer
  • "Don't fall asleep in your enemy's dream"—and why tomorrow will be better
  • What he would pour into the world right now if he could—and why he believes people should weep a little more

About Reginald Dwayne Betts:
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, author, lawyer, and Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization transforming access to literature in prisons while advancing criminal justice reform across America. At sixteen, he was sentenced to nine years in adult prison—including fourteen months in solitary confinement—where a book of poetry slid under his cell door and changed the course of his life.

He went on to earn a J.D. from Yale Law School, receive both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and become a nationally recognized poet and advocate for prison reform, criminal justice reform, and the transformative power of literature. He is the author of the memoir A Question of Freedom and the poetry collections Felon, Doggerel, and others. His latest collection, Doggerel, was published in 2025. His documentary March Forth, chronicling his life and the work of Freedom Reads, premiered at the 2026 Tribeca Festival.

Connect With Reginald Dwayne Betts:
Instagram: @dwaynebetts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginald-dwayne-betts-esq-494a20102/
Freedom Reads Instagram: @freedombeginswithabook
Freedom Reads LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/freedomreads
Freedom Reads Website: www.freedomreads.org
Film — March Forth: https://tribecafilm.com/films/march-forth-2026
Book — Doggerel: https://amzn.to/4vxsva2
Book — Felon:  https://amzn.to/4hbzEcs
Book — A Question of Freedom: https://amzn.to/3R95axo

About Ariane de Bonvoisin:
Ariane de Bonvoisin is the founder of The Spirit Collective, a podcast at the intersection of success and spirituality. A former media and venture capital executive, she left the corporate world to integrate her own external success and inner path — and now interviews remarkable people from business, finance, sport, music, and beyond about a side of their lives they rarely discuss: their spiritual path. Honest conversations about spirituality, purpose, and personal growth, with people you wouldn't expect. New episodes weekly.

Connect With The Spirit Collective:
Website: spiritcollective.com
YouTube: @ariane-de-bonvoisin
Instagram: @arianedebonvoisin
LinkedIn: /arianed1
X: @clickariane
TikTok: @arianedebonvoisin

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#SpiritCollectivePodcast #ReginaldDwayneBetts #FreedomReads #PrisonReform #SpiritualPodcast


 

Connect with Ariane:

SPEAKER_03

I remember the day I got sent. I was frustrated because I realized I was going to prison. And I convinced myself that I wasn't. And then I'm in a cell, and it's like solitary. It's a whole cell. I'm like, yo man, you know, what am I gonna be when I leave here? You know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna lose time now, you know what I mean? But like when I leave, she taught me that you could forgive yourself and that you could grow into being the person that you are. And she's always been my strongest supporter, but she's also been a person that has reflected to me what it means to be strong. Tomorrow we'll be better. You get to sell seeds in the world, and you always have a choice about whether what you say adds to someone's suffering or eases their suffering. It's moments that you just don't have the answer, and to find a way to still talk the pizza rice I have now is two ways to stay young.

SPEAKER_00

Hi, this is Ariane, and welcome to another episode of the Spirit Collective, where I talk to remarkable people about a side of their lives they rarely talk about, their spiritual path. It's time for a different conversation. I have never interviewed someone who went to jail for nearly nine years, most of it spent in solitary confinement. Duane Betts was 16 years old, a gifted honors student, class treasurer, and by every external measure, a kid that was definitely going somewhere, when he and a friend made a series of bad decisions one night in a Virginia Mall parking lot. He held a gun to a man's head, stole his car, and was tried as an adult. But the story begins much later, when somebody whose name he never learnt slid a paperback book called The Black Poets under his cell door. In the buildings above him, other men had quietly built, with torn sheets tied into a rope strung between cells 40 feet apart and books travelling in pillowcases, along it a secret library, a network, some form of alternate reality. What he read in that book convinced him that there were other ways to live. He walked out of prison on March 4th, 2005, worked at a bookstore, got into college, then Yale Law School, then a MacArthur Fellowship. He's now more importantly a poet, a father of two sons, a devoted husband, a lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, which has now placed more than 500 libraries inside of American prisons. We put millions of people in prison, Duane says. I want to put millions of books in prison. His new film, March 4th, premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. The title is the date that he walked out. Duane and I met at TED in Vancouver this year. I've been thinking about you ever since, Duane, about what you believe, about what you would talk about, about your inner journey, your soul's journey, what you read now, and also what you would tell your sons. Today I want to ask this man about his spiritual life, maybe about how it has been to be at the very bottom and to walk back up. Certainly you know things that maybe we don't. But Duane, it's a real pleasure to welcome you to the Spirit Collective.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, it's a pleasure. It's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_00

It is gonna be fun. We're gonna have a very different conversation. A lot of prison stories that I've heard, they they kind of are what I call clean spiritual narratives. People walk in, they say they found God inside, they were saved. I'm not gonna do that here with you at all. But I do want to I do want to take you back to your childhood and just know what was your earliest relationship to faith, to God, to higher power, to something your family believed in. Was there anything at the beginning, even before, you know, what happened when you were 16?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but these aren't fair because these become, in some ways, like like the memories that I use to help me understand things, you know, and not necessarily like really um windows into the faith practices that I had as a kid, because some of those just have to do with paying attention to the world, like finding fully clovers. Um my aunt, my aunt, the one that really hit me to that, and I just found two yesterday. And there's a certain amount of attention to detail that that is required of it. But in terms of actual church, we didn't really go much, but I do remember once born and I was in line to get baptized. I was young, maybe four years old, maybe five. And um, when I got to the front, they asked me um like what I wanted to do, and I was in line to get baptized, but you know, I didn't know how to answer the question. And the pastor was like, come back when you when you know when you know what you want. It was interesting because in my head, that is like a certain kind of relationship with with a religion that developed, and it was a kind of uncomfortability with it, you know, uncomfortability with being able to name um a blessing, or even to be able to name a desire to know more than what you know as um as something that you could recognize that you've been overwhelmed by figuring out on your own. Um but I think I've I've grown since then, and I have a complicated relationship with it, um, which is to say I'm not gonna be in church every Sunday, but I live in a sense of awe because of um what I've witnessed and experienced.

SPEAKER_00

So take me back to when you were 16. What was your relationship to life, a higher power? Were you just a regular 16-year-old teenager? Did you think, like, was there a sort of punishing, judging God?

SPEAKER_03

Was there a I had a couple times when I was supposed to get baptized and I didn't. And then when I didn't, people would say that's the devil talking to you. You know, I had moments like that at 16. But generally I was, I can't remember. You know, I can't, I can't, I I I would just say that I had these moments that my relationship was more about um the proposition of faith, particularly in the context of the lives of some of the people I know that they were living. You know, how do you think about faith in the context of poverty? How do you think about it in the context of um the violent of prison, even though I wasn't in prison at the time, I was still reading books about it. And so I think I would I was more so engaged with it in that way. And it's been as I gotten older that I I've experienced enough moments of wonderment that that's not the same argument I'm making. But I I still do think it's a lot of relevance and what can come off as a political argument when you're talking about like what faiths you know you you then give your attention to.

SPEAKER_00

I like the uh the faith is wonderment and the faith is awe and the faith is beauty.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Those are three three beautiful words. Um I do want to touch on the the prison story. Did you feel like your faith weakened, strengthened, changed during those nine years?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, yeah, I think I think that I discovered during that time faith is like it's not as coherently ties to um institution as I did at first. Because I think that was really helpful, and that's something that happened in prison. Um but I think my faith strengthened. I was never the one that's to survive prison. You know, I was um 125, so pounds, so yeah, I my whole survival was a thing that strengthened my faith.

SPEAKER_00

Can you take me to, if you can take me back there, can you take me back to your inner dialogue? Like what did you say to yourself? Whether you're speaking to something greater or not, it doesn't even matter. But what was your inner dialogue? Was it positive? Was it horrible? Was it did you pump yourself up?

SPEAKER_03

I remember the day I got sentenced. Um I was frustrated because I realized I was going to prison. And I convinced myself that I wasn't, you know. And then I'm I'm in a cell. And it's like solitary, like it's there's a holding cell. I'm like, yo, man, you know, what am I gonna be when I leave here? You know what I mean? Like, like I know I gotta do this time now, you know what I mean? But like when I leave, and I was like, you know, you can't be an engineer. I mean, you're in prison. Like, yeah, I'm gonna be a writer. Yeah, man, I'm gonna be a writer. I'm gonna be a writer. And that had nothing to do with, you know, um time. And and I was far enough away from the finish line that that could have easily been that my question. But it was. And it it would drive my thinking for the next number of years, you know.

SPEAKER_00

So it was you having a compelling future. It was quite Victor Frankel, right? It's very like, I know what I'm gonna be and what I'm gonna do when I get out of here.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I love that he said that. You know, and and Primo Levy.

SPEAKER_00

Did you get angry with life? If we want to call it life, we don't need to call it God. Did you did you have kind of moments of going what the hell?

SPEAKER_03

I was guilty, and I think you know, one of the things about being guilty for something that lands you in prison is that uh holding on to that guilt uh helps you somehow know that you making it right as a part of your responsibility. And then um passing around anger ain't ain't ain't ain't as easy to do as it is if you've only been like victimized, you know. And I know hurt exists, we all hurt people, but it's different to to know that you put a pistol on somebody. You know, it's hard to be angry at God when I'm when I did that.

SPEAKER_00

Did you do anything that was sort of predictable? Like, are there prayer circles in prison? Did you participate in any of those? Is there church in prison? Like, I mean, people have a perception of this. So I I want to know what the truth is.

SPEAKER_03

Because like it's it's all of those, it's all of the I when I was young, I used to go to the Christian service. Um my homeboy was um he was a Christian and he led a service. And I would go to the roster service, and I would go to the uh to the Muslim service. So they had these services, and when I was young, I would find mentors whoever I could, you know. Um, and they always had that. And then I think you had people that was always developing something, and so you had prayer circles, um, you had the regular prayer circles that happened with the organized religions, but you also had informal spiritual practices that were going on all of the time. And in any way, even outside of the Juma service, even outside of Sunday service, uh, people who were spiritually inclined in that way formed their own communities and they did things in support of each other. But but honestly though, you know, I think, you know, I think the basketball court was a religion. Or not a religion, but a spiritual practice for people. And I think for some, and I think so is running, you know, running clubs with people who developed. And I understand that it gets to a point where like everything becomes a practice, but it is true, I think, that when you think about it as being a way for you to sort of sustain yourself and survive in the world, it's a lot of those practices that that I would note now in retrospect because I've had my life transformed by like getting on the bike and bicycling.

SPEAKER_00

Would you describe yourself as a spiritual man today? Is that part of your identity?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00

Tell me why? Why does that feel right to you?

SPEAKER_03

Well, I mean I chase awe and wonderment. I try to acknowledge it when I see it, and I believe in its value, you know, and I believe that the world isn't just about me. And I'm I'm humbled by the largeness of it all and the and the bounty of it all.

SPEAKER_00

So for someone who has a complicated relationship with spirituality who might be listening to you, how would you uncomplicate it for them?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, you know, I the truth is that um people say, Well, you have a great life now. But I was in that prison cell and I was I had 20 pounds and a kid, you know, I still felt a sense of wonder. And um, and I would just say, start with that. I once opened up a a book and dozens of fully clovers fell out with like these dry fully flovers, and and they were um you know, and they wanna booth my aunt and I mean cell and these clovers fall out. And I was just like awed by the beauty of the metaphor coming to life and what was represented as her time and her looking, right? Well, I think that uh there are other things that reflect our ability to like look and and think and I think we could just produce those those those things that connect to that.

SPEAKER_00

Can you share a couple of things that that met your sense of wonder in prison? It's not a word.

SPEAKER_03

I had this homeboy. Yeah, I had this homeboy who um he could take two walkmen and produce a third one, and the third one will be able to record things. And and and the microphone, and it have a hidden compartment that when you flip the switch, all of a sudden the play button became a record button, and the microphone was the was the the the speakers, the headphones became the microphone. Um I thought that was that was just amazing. And um let me see, that's one thing. Um I had a couple more things, all right. One is um I saw this dude, man. He had a book in Spanish. I was like, what's going on? What's that? He showed me the book. I was like, that's in Spanish. I was like, oh, where you from? And he's like, Norfolk. I said, Well, I mean, where your people from now like Virginia, Norfolk. Like, you know what I'm asking, man. How you speak Spanish? He's like, I taught myself. He taught us so Spanish. He was amazing. And that's just two things of many, really.

SPEAKER_00

Tell me about your love affair with books.

SPEAKER_03

Oh man, let's probably go back to like second grade, you know, going to the library, having to pick a book out, and I found this book about um an encyclopedia of like sports heroes and learned about George Mican and all these other folks. And uh I got it on my bed and like just ending Watamosi. And right now I'm still reading Water Most. I got this new book on my bed.

SPEAKER_00

Tell me, um, when you when when the the network of books started happening when you were in jail, what did it represent for you? It was more than a book, so what did it represent?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it meant a kind of a kind of freedom, a kind of attention, a way to hold my own, you know, a way to become immersed in a thousand other stories besides mine. Because mine felt like a little what was me. Um but it was also a way to think and engage with history. I mean it was it was a book that really changed how I imagined what was possible with language and with words.

SPEAKER_00

And I can hear how even just you know, speaking to you for a few minutes, how precise you are with your words and how much depth is in your choice of language in many ways. Did you did you know? Did you know you were gonna write a book one day? Was it always there?

SPEAKER_03

Nah. No, I think um, yeah, I think I was just trying to get by. And um I did. And as I got by, I think I was um I think a lot of the stuff I discovered on the humble. And and it's things I I probably would have wanted to do as a writer. But like writing for the New York Times magazine, that's just something I did because I had an idea and I thought this was a good way to bring the idea to life. Um, so some of these things I would have never imagined doing, but some of them were sort of in the wheelhouse of being a writer, you know, publishing the book. I didn't imagine myself doing it, but it all happened so fast when I came home that I went from like never dreaming of it to imagining it to, oh, this is when my book comes out. But it's these other things that I think are even more like complicatedly like blowing me away, like Freedom Reads. This is something that wasn't in a bingo card at all.

SPEAKER_00

Tell us, um, tell us when that showed up for you.

SPEAKER_03

Uh 2020. Yeah, I had somebody um ask me what I would do if if like money wasn't an issue for people in prison. I was like, well, you know, we put millions of people inside. I I put millions of books inside. And then I started iterating on the idea, and it became a project of Yale, and then an independent organization.

SPEAKER_00

On your release date, right, March 4th, what did you take me back to that time. What what did it feel like? What were you saying to yourself? And and what was, I guess, your biggest piece of wisdom that you had that day that you didn't have when you went in?

SPEAKER_03

I wanted to go to college. And so I was just thinking, I had I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go to college.

SPEAKER_00

But also like I hadn't um hadn't done any of those things for a long time that that that like help you become What life wisdom, what life experience, what life lesson did you have when you came out so clearly in your mind that you didn't have when you came in?

SPEAKER_03

Nah, I'm honestly I was I was 24. So I don't know if I had a life lesson. You know, I was still amazingly young. You know, I I just had no clue about about anything. And I think about it now, I mean, a part of it that works is that, you know, I had to begin functioning immediately. So I had to sort of perform adulthood while I tried to learn it. And um I mean I did okay, but that's that's how I ended up, you know, married with a kid in in like three years, you know. Um and I never got a chance to be a student, so I went to law school. But you know, part of even going to law school was making things work based on the situation I was in. And so it's just like I I didn't get that moment of wisdom. I I I'm I so I so more so got in the maelstrom of life, and and I figured out how to swim.

SPEAKER_00

So what do you have now? What's the what's the piece of wisdom where you're like life taught me this?

SPEAKER_03

I don't know. I mean it's just it's one of the I mean it's interesting because it's it's this profound question. It's like, what have you learned after this all all this time? And also, like, I came out of prison still a kid, and that's one of the things I realized. I went in a kid, but for a long time I thought 24 was some kind of adult. But I'm I'm 45 now, and I recognize that 24 is still a kid, particularly if you have none of those life experiences, and I had none of them at all. And I think the piece of advice I I have now is um I mean it's two ways to stay young, and I think you should do them both. The first way is to remember that you always learn, and that there's real joy and the humility that comes from recognizing that like it's better to be a student than imagine that you're a pro at everything. And uh, and even the things that we master, we still students because mastery requires constant refreshers, you know. Um but the other thing is that uh I wish I would have had a better sense of the fact that uh everything takes time and I was compelled to rush for all kinds of reasons and it all worked out, but I wish I would have known that time is a beautiful thing to have to say though, particularly around important life decisions and and important life changes.

SPEAKER_00

Do you feel today that you have slowed down or what's helped you slow down?

SPEAKER_03

No, I've I've probably about all people admission would say I've I've spared up. So, but it makes you slow down a little bit though, right? Because it's this weird way in which, you know, when you go like if you watch a movie and people get into like mock speed, they have to slow down and make you see them, or they'll still disappear. So that's what I'm doing. I'm in mock speed, but it's a kind of way that I've also slowed down so you can see me moving, which is um, which is a a new way to live.

SPEAKER_00

So take me back to where you weren't too fast.

SPEAKER_03

Well, you know, it was just not noticing it though. It was not taking the the the time to like visit another country. It was not taking the time to cook. I took cook for my sons all the time, and it's but it's also and I've always cooked, but like now I look at recipes and I try new things, and it's a part of a series of experiences that I'm creating for us and for them. Um I smile more, I take pictures, and I take pictures of the same streets that I walk every day, um, cementing the way that I'm a part of this place. I think that that's a way in which I am slowing down in ways that I hadn't before because I just thought that there was a need to go from A to B, not just with as much quickness as possible, but recognizing that sometimes quickness is literally taking your time. Because one of the things I've always wanted was to build relationships and community. Um it's like a million brief touches is not going to have the power of one substantial one. And I need to pay attention to that one substantial.

SPEAKER_00

So you have two sons, right? Miles and Micah? Mika? Mikai, yeah. Makai. Um so if I spoke to them, what would they tell me is most important to their dad?

SPEAKER_03

They probably say school, education.

SPEAKER_00

Really?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Books. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And what would you tell them about how to live their life as men in this world?

SPEAKER_03

I think it's a a a lot of things that I've been telling them all along, you know. But I do think that um I would tell them it's important to have a code and to recognize that the moments in our life that matter most is when. Our beliefs are challenged and we have to stand up for them and we have to hold to them because sometimes convenience suggests doing the worst possible thing. Or the thing that's just slightly easier. You know, but being a good human requires you to do the right thing.

SPEAKER_00

Can you share some of the the best family codes?

SPEAKER_03

Oh yeah, I'm I mean some of you is interesting because you you gotta develop them, right? And I think some of them I'm developing now, right? But I I think um be more help in the lives of people you care about they hurt you you say the right thing. You tell the truth, even if it's challenging. You understand and respect that your mental health is important, and so is the mental health of others, and that means talking to somebody that family comes in all kinds of like different shapes and configurations, and and and you know that that's because that me and their parents are me and their mom is divorced, that means that um that we ain't still a family, you know. But it's interesting too, because part of this exercise is saying, man, how do you remember the things that you want your children to know? And how many times have you said it in a way in which it's a thing, you know, not not like vibes, right? Because like, and I think I you notice I didn't say thou shalt not kill. I mean, I think that's important, you know what I mean? But but like I'm not I'm not gonna say it though, because it's not one of the things that they need to see hear me say, or like thou shalt not steal, right? But I do think it's some affirmative things that I want us to remember that we believe in, because these are the other things that are substantive. Some of them is like, yo, kid, you you might want to do this thing. I don't think you should do it because it makes me feel like you would be in danger. And as a parent, I can't put you in a situation that feels like danger. And yes, you have to grow up and you have to do these things, but this one is not the one. You know, even that in itself becomes a not a struggle, but but a thing in which it's me trying to, you know, give them some values.

SPEAKER_00

Is some form of relationship to the divine source, love, consciousness, is that in the house? Is that something they are exposed to? Is that something they've heard from you?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and they go to church with their mom, you know what I mean? And and we've been consistent and pain and consistent in going to church. So, you know what I mean? And um, and I think that so the way in which I articulate it or we've been doing it now, it's probably something that I'm in the process of of doing uh more, you know what I mean? But um, because sometimes you just want to have a language uh for it, you know what I mean? And I've talked to them about different things I've done, but yeah, you gotta have a language for it.

SPEAKER_00

What is your word?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I is it life?

SPEAKER_00

Is it the universe? Is it things that you're those?

SPEAKER_03

I I all of them actually. I say God a lot, and in my book Dog Rule, I say God a lot. I usually usually say G-D. I actually never really write it out. Um, I say gods sometimes, but but I've written I've written Gazus as a poetic art form in which the whole practice is like to talk to the spiritual, and you say, Dear beloved, dear matchmaker, dear toothsayer, you know, and so you you you articulate the name for God. I mean, even in the Islamic tradition, you had the 99 names of four Allah. So I think when when I believe that I am multitudes, which does not mean that I am God, but to have multitudes within us means that we have different ways in which we relate to the idea in different points and states of our lives, especially when the act of literature gives us a way to recognize that sometimes we relate by holding on to the beliefs of another person. And it might only be for hours. So, you know, I've been in rooms where they were um doing Hindu spiritual practices, and in that moment I've been connected to it. And so I think that it's I am really trying to say that in container multitudes, I've tapped into it in different ways, but I do concede your point, um, Ariane, that like I have to talk to my sons about this, though. It can't, it can't just be vibes, it can't just be me trying to be a person that lives in the world this way. It has to be me. I'm trying to communicate to my sons what these practices are that I've accumulated like rings. Because, you know, for me, that accumulation has been, you know, me trying to be the spiritual cat I am, you know. I mean, but that has I mean, I can fucking study yoga, yo. It's a dark yoga, and it was like, it was like you ain't gotta, it was like, yo, it was perfect for me. It was like you don't have to do yoga because I ain't really gonna do yoga in prison, right? It's like you ain't have to do yoga, you just read. And then in reading, it is doing the yoga. And I was like, what man, this is for me, and I would get the things every month. So so I've I've done a lot of it.

SPEAKER_00

Did you call yourself a spiritual cat? I like that. That's hilarious. Um, do you do you feel like there's a sort of big question that you have right now going on for God? Like, do you do you have some sort of, you know, yeah, like this?

SPEAKER_03

Well interesting because um I don't know, man. I feel like in my life, I feel like I'm just uh I have something to do. And that thing is not necessarily questioning, that thing is to to do the thing. And it spend a lot of time. I spent a lot of time not knowing what that was. And um and now I know. And so in that I'm spending a lot of time doing and dealing with my own personal struggles and the regular needs of life that get in the way of that doing, dealing with my own mental health, but and dealing with my own need for joy, you know. Um, so I don't think I have questions these days, and it feels good not to be questioned. I just I am doing, you know, and I have some joy in the door.

SPEAKER_00

Dwayne, with Freedom Reads, for example, did you feel a sense of guidance? Did you feel that this had your name on it? Did you feel like you were meant to do it?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, my book is called Off the Cuff. My new book is called Off the Cuff, but in some ways it's about how I responded to the world and how I feel like I've been like gifted these radical, beautiful, deeply meaningful opportunities, right? I mean, somebody says, you know, what would you do if if if money wasn't an issue for people in prison, and that becomes freedom reads. And I got all the other moments in my life that that feel like pure whimsy, but it's clearly the hand of God, you know, all my life. Like from deciding to go to law school because somebody had said that they went to law school because they knew they wasn't finished learning. So I'm not finished learning either. Maybe law school is where I should be to you know, so many other moments in my life that that matter and that'll help shape me. So so yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Talk to me about the hand of God.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, just you know, I I mean, I had a I was having a conversation with somebody, and they were explaining to us that um I'm struggling, and we in the Harvard Law School's cafeteria, and we're there because I like to write with a lot of noise around me. And so somebody calls my friend's name, and he sees her and he's like, Well, what are you doing here? Didn't you get your MFA from the I.O. Writers workshop? She's like, Yeah, yeah. But I figured I wasn't finished with school, and I was gonna PhD in English or go to law school, and I decided to go to law school. I had never thought about going to law school before. I hear that conversation, and I'm like, I'm going to law school, and I'm going to Harvard because I'm standing in Harvard's law school. I ended up going to Yale, but I got into Harvard. But to me, that's like a hand of God kind of moment. You know, I wasn't supposed to be there. I've gotten five people out of prison. And once you've done something like that, you recognize how fickle it is, and and and it happened.

SPEAKER_00

So do you call that? I know some people will be like, wow, is that the same thing as synchronicity? Is it being a good thing?

SPEAKER_03

I do love it, and I love that word. Yep. And I actually love that word synchronicity, though. Because um it's like everything, everywhere, all at once. You know, and that's that's how it is.

SPEAKER_00

It's how you and I met. You and I were not meant to meet.

SPEAKER_03

I wouldn't, that was not my meeting.

SPEAKER_00

That was not my meeting either. And then we were all in this meeting together.

SPEAKER_03

Because what happened was like I had a meeting, but um, the person we were meeting with had like kind of was was pressed for time and had to meet with all of us. And we joined our meetings because we were like, wait, why not? That's like, yeah, so yeah, it is why how we met.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. When you double book meetings, there's always a gift in it, though.

SPEAKER_03

It is always a gift. We gotta we gotta tell her about this, Hannah. We gotta tell her about this.

SPEAKER_00

We will. Um, Duane, uh, there's a couple of other terms that I just, you know, I would say are kind of in the classical spiritual language, because I can hear that you're a language person. Tell me, tell me just your your first response when I say this. Do you believe in karma?

SPEAKER_03

I do. My belief is complex just because you know, you never know where you start out. So it's more warning than destiny. It's just remember that like you get to sow seeds in the world, and and you always have a choice about whether what you say like adds to someone's suffering or eases their suffering.

SPEAKER_00

What about past lives? Do you believe in past lives? Do you believe you're coming back? Do you believe you've been here before?

SPEAKER_03

That's interesting. I mean, it's a fascinating idea. Sometimes I had a moment at deja boo, it's like I can't believe that this happened. Um, I think that I would love to be compelled by humility and and and sometimes I fear the solace that I would get from knowing I would return it or that I was here before. Um, but my imagination runs wild, and it's one of these things that you know I like to think about, like three books where the characters have lived forever or have just lived a past life. It's one of my favorite fantasy novels. This dude discovers all of the lives he lived. You know what I mean? In his early 20s. I mean, this is kind of a beautiful thing about that accumulation of knowledge and history, and maybe again, I have also accumulated names and identities, so so I I think I take Whitman's confession that I am marty to in the most figurative, literative, and imaginative way possible.

SPEAKER_00

Do you believe in uh life after death?

SPEAKER_03

I believe that if you're so um I would have more songs in my heart.

SPEAKER_00

Do you believe in soulmates?

SPEAKER_03

I do. A smile comes to your lips, you you gotta say yes to that question.

SPEAKER_00

But so but tell me more. So what is a soulmate? Is a soulmate yeah, I'm not gonna put words in your mouth of old people.

SPEAKER_03

It's one of these things though. It's like um like when you've experienced it, you begin to know it. Um sort of like somebody who um who makes you realize that we all kind of Tetris figures on the board, hoping to match up in just the right way. And it's that rare time when like all of the divots and the crooks and the crookets match and fit in a way that's just perfect. And also accidental, you know, and so for me a thing is like like laughter, and then thing is how we deal with sorrow, how we deal with pain, like what we confess to each other. Um, but also I was I was I was falling in love and I was writing these love poems, and um I was thinking about how I realized that a love poem is confessing to something like and now twice your lips or my tears, which is a completely different way of telling somebody that they mean something. And so um we all live and exist in the world in different ways, but I do think that soulmating inspires a thing in you that didn't exist before, kind of the articulateness that didn't exist before, a little bit of a jeunesse quoi, right? And um, and then if you have a story that that thing is wrapped around in, and then the story gives it energy. Because this is a woman that I first kissed when I was a teenager, and so it also has this sense of um foreverness, or or the closest you can get to foreverness when you have something that distanced and and and and reconnect in a circle. I mean, it it's evidence of being able to live multiple lives in one lifetime. And I know that I mean in some ways I profoundly um my life is profound evidence of the ability to live multiple lives in one lifetime.

SPEAKER_00

I think I read somewhere that you told your your wife at the time when you were on your second date with her that you had been to jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and that's probably well when you were in the morning.

SPEAKER_00

The thing that the thing that touched me was just the power of the vulnerability and to sort of move, you know, we all have things that we don't want to tell people that's kind of in our you know secret hiding space. That's not at all what you did though. You were just like, here's everything that's in that place.

SPEAKER_03

But it's really interesting because um because that's what my girlfriend said to me yesterday, or recently, about the power of my vulnerability. And and that's the thing that um everybody doesn't recognize. And I think I've been fortunate to have a lot of the world recognize the power of that. Um, but but that's also one of the soulmate things, though, right? Because it's certain it's degrees to the recognition, you know, and and it's an understanding what it means. Um, and even an understanding that like sometimes I am trying to figure out what it means, and I'm struggling with it because of, you know, it's not just um easygoing because of that.

SPEAKER_00

So for people who are listening, where this term vulnerability, it kind of irks them, you know, men have been told to be vulnerable and women are asking for more vulnerability. What is what is sort of the simplest way to to to reach for that, even though the word might not land for people? What is it?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, there's moments that you just don't have the answer. And to find a way to still talk during those moments. Like far too often we lean into silence, and then we believe doing is something that should not be done, right? So I think um vulnerability is being willing to talk when you don't have an answer, even if that's just to say I don't have an answer.

SPEAKER_00

Do you feel vulnerability is a synonym for just radical honesty?

SPEAKER_03

Um maybe, maybe not though. Because you know, I mean, it's a part of it. And it and it is it is one of those things. But I also think for me, like vulnerability is like that first step to like getting me going. Because when I admit that I don't know something down and I'm willing to say it, that means I'm willing to fix it in terms of get the knowledge, put people in position to have the knowledge, you know. So like radical honesty doesn't actually come with a ask, a set of like tasks to get the outcome. Radical honesty is one of the things that's within the process that's helping you get to what the next thing is, right? But um, yeah. Vulnerability, I think, is almost like a out, it's a verb.

SPEAKER_00

Um, you mentioned mental health. Why do you think we are so struggling with mental health right now on the planet? What's different? What's changed? What's missing?

SPEAKER_03

Maybe it's a uh uh increased expectation for justice. I think it's also the ways in which the internet has made us connected in ways we never were before. And it's a strange way in which being connected to each other more has been more chaotic, you know. And um, but then also I think that we are learning how to care for each other in a new world. Our brains have been shaped in a way that like no generation before us has had our brains shaped, and our diets have been shaped. And so um, in a way that prison is hitting us, I think it's a lot of things that are different that we're figuring out. Which is okay. I think it just means uh we get to be human just like those before us. And we can act like our concerns are new or hit us differently, but even if our concerns are new, the impact that imagined concerns other generations had hit them with the same force. You know, like the thing that matters is not necessarily how huge the problem is, but how much that the force of and weight of that problem on your human body, I don't think that's shifted, you know.

SPEAKER_00

What's your biggest source of joy these days?

SPEAKER_03

Love all of it, you know what I mean, like for real. I got abundance of love and I think it brings me great joy.

SPEAKER_00

How have you learned to love yourself?

SPEAKER_03

Slowly and and carefully, and like if I understand there's a difference between empathy and responsibility, you know and um and that she had a my professor used to tell me all the time, make sure you put the oxygen mask on yourself first. And now I take that seriously because it forces me to know first that I deserve to be saved, and I deserve to be healthy and whole. Yeah. And taking care of other people is not an assertion that that thing is true, that's an assertion that they deserve to be healthy and whole, which may very well be true. But if they deserve to be that, then that means that you deserve to live because you are a conduit to that thing for them. You know, you can't like if you can't swim, you can't be jumping into the river to save people.

SPEAKER_02

I got you, I got you. Can you swim, sir? No, don't jump in, don't but I need to rescue you, but you can't swim, sir. Won't you get somebody who can swim? Yeah. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00

Do I go? Take me, uh, take me inside your routines for joy, for taking care of yourself, for your own mental health. Like, what's non-negotiable? What's like, you know, I always do this or I never do that.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I was up this morning at uh three and I got dressed and uh um checked the ties of my bicycle to see if they had air and uh you know bike 14 miles, listen to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know when I got back, got my camera, got you know, got dressed, got my camera, walked outside and walked a couple miles and took pictures of the people in the street. Took a call while taking pictures, a couple calls actually, freedom reads work. Um I saw the problems. Instead of haggling about it, I made a decision after consulting with a mentor, you know. Um but it's interesting, this is just my life, and it all brings me joy, you know. But it all started with like getting on that bike, and that all became the fuel for me to like really like hockey, ho focus and um and honing on what was necessary.

SPEAKER_00

So you're not one of these people that it's like, you know, my morning routine is this, my evening routine is this. It feels more like you're just in the flow of listening to what's coming through you. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and I mean I've been up since one o'clock, though. And so my my my up and down, my like my sleeping patterns are just I'm gonna go to sleep tonight at eight, and then I'm gonna get up. And so, so also because of that, my rhythms are kind of different. And it's not necessarily a thing that I do. I I do that in in the morning, it might be me cleaning up the whole morning. And it's a weird freedom in doing whatever I need to do at three o'clock or like at five o'clock, depending on when I go out to bike. But using those hours like that, like I bike three o'clock to four thirty, three o'clock to five, then six to six thirty means something completely different to me. You know, I mean, and I might I might like send three emails out and schedule them to go out. So the rhythm changes, but my ability to do that work doesn't. And and again, some days I take a bike for 30 minutes instead of an hour and a half, which gives me even more time. Um, but I like it.

SPEAKER_00

So, what would you say is the best thing for your mental health and the thing that you know triggers your mental health in a bad way?

SPEAKER_03

The best thing is cycling. The thing that triggers it in a bad way is feeling like I'm being taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_00

Talk to me a bit about the movie, just because it's coming out and premiering in the next couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, it's interesting because March 4th is the day I came home. Uh, it's also the birthday of the director, producer, Robe and Briano, one of them. Robert Hung is the other one. But it's also like me trusting them to tell this story. And I learned how dope and interesting and like sophisticated a visionary team you have to build to do something like this. That it was me and it was the two of them, but then it was people on the camera, and it was just the crew, and it was the way in which they designed how the film was gonna be shot, but also how the story was gonna be told. And it's Brian Henry Tyree that's that's like narrating the film, and it's all my words, it was my poetry and my prose. I do the poetry, he's reading the prose, and it's these interviews, but it's a beautiful way to tell a story. And for me, it was something to see where it meant for me to be vulnerable because I was vulnerable and I gave my story to these other creative. People and they built this thing that I think is lovely and engaging and exciting in the premieres in Tribeca. I mean something they did, people just say like the gravity that your mom has in it is beautiful and amazing. Um and so I I like how it tells an interesting story that is my life, but it's also Freedom Reeves, and it's also a story about incarceration in America, and it's also a piece about fatherhood.

SPEAKER_00

Tell me about your relationship to your mom. How did she do it? Yeah, how did it sounds like she was everything and I I Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

She's my heart. And it's one of these situations where she taught me that you could forgive yourself and that um you could grow into being the person that you are. And she's always been my stronger supporter, but she's also been a person that has reflected to me what it means to be strong, which is which is what it means to keep going, essentially. And I'm she's always showing me how important that is.

SPEAKER_00

Would that be her definition of being strong? Because it's a beautiful definition, especially for a man.

SPEAKER_03

To keep going. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I want to talk about this this word that I hear in your poetry, but also in this in the interview, which is um it's beauty. It feels to me like Dwayne, you find beauty in in everything. It sounds like you found beauty in jail, you found beauty in really hard times, and even just the decision that you know you were being sent to jail, you found beauty in books, you find beauty in everything. Like what why it comes seems like it comes easily to you. So teach me, help me.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but now I think it has to be an active practice, though. I look for four-leaf clovers all of the time. I mean, I found a couple yesterday. It's just a practice. The camera for me is is looking for beauty and looking at beauty. And so, you know, I I I think I do it all the time, but I think it's an active practice that we all have to engage in and remind ourselves that it is a real value. We have so much to do. Uh looking for beauty allows us to slow down. And slowing down for 10 seconds within a minute, you might still get to the same place in the same amount of time, but for those 10 seconds, something happened. And that's what I mean about being able to move fast and move slow. You know.

SPEAKER_00

I know this might seem like a strange question, but for people who have never been and have never seen, you know, what jail is like from the inside, what is beautiful about jail?

SPEAKER_03

The people who are there. You know, the way in which they create ideas that soften the harshness of their lives, the ambitions and the hopes. The same thing that's beautiful about all our lives, really. You know, a lot of us are living in places that are as desperate and ruinous as as a as a jail. And in the same way that those folks have beauty, it's it's the same. It's just sometimes the landscape upon which their beauty rests is one that we might not ever be forgiven for allowing to exist.

SPEAKER_00

What was the thing when you were there that you missed the most? Other than your mother for sure.

SPEAKER_03

I mean I went in at 16, so to be honest, I I just I was a child. I I I knew that I was having nascent desires, you know, about what the world should look like and what my role was in it. But I I didn't have anything to miss. I hadn't driven, you know, I mean, I hadn't had a job, I hadn't graduated from high school, I hadn't had a serious girlfriend. I didn't know what I was missing. You know, I knew it conceptually, but I didn't know what it actually means.

SPEAKER_00

Are you in touch with the people you were incarcerated with?

SPEAKER_03

Uh just one guy. My co-defendant Marcus, but not anybody else. He was the yeah, but and that's one of my best friends.

SPEAKER_00

What do you feel people get wrong about people who've been to jail?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, they're saying people who've been in jail is a descriptive phrase that really matters. I mean it literally, it's like acting as if it matters if you say people who wear bracelets around their wrists. I mean, it says something, but see, there you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, talking about bracelets, I I need to ask you about your rings. Tell me about the rings, Jane. I mean, I I'm paying attention here.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's just, you know, I got I got kind of obsessed with different manifestations of my own character that I wasn't thinking about before. And wearing rings was one of them. And I went from, you know, I went to wearing five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten in a day sometimes. This is five. This is eleven, I have eleven on. So I have um rings on nine fingers, and two of them I have uh two rings on a piece. But yeah, and they all capture moments, though. These snapshots and the things that happened to me, you know, stores I just walked into.

SPEAKER_00

So pick one and tell me the story and the symbolism behind it.

SPEAKER_03

This one, I was in Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I just walked into a spot, and it's a jade, piece of jade from the longest river in Guatemala. I think about it, and I was um, you know, with my folks, and me and my girl, we were looking at the um Black Wall Street, and I was performing there, and we were walking the streets like every day, and I just walked past the shop and grabbed this, but this was a Guatemalan, and I was thinking about the history of that country. And so the piece ends up representing these different phases of migration that we're always in, and the ways in which um our home is often built the homes that of others that we destroyed or that we displaced, and so it holds all of that too.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I share something similar. I feel the same way about all these bracelets. There's just a story and they talk to me. I think symbolism is important. Um couple of last questions, Dwayne. Um when you look at the world, when you look at the state of the world, and it sounds like you see a lot of beauty in the world as well. So this is not a negatively led question. What do you see that is missing? What do you see that it's like if you could just pour something into the world right now? Not as a poet, not as a poet, not as a lawyer, but just really as you know, your most deepest self.

SPEAKER_03

I think people should just weep a little bit more. I think people should just notice the suffering. You don't have to have an answer. Just notice it in a way that's not a little bit less callous. I'd love to see more public affirmations of the relief that we provide to people who suffer, and public affirmations of the the sorrow that we feel in the face of all of it that we can't touch.

SPEAKER_00

Is there something that um you believe really deep down that you haven't really shared before? Is there something where you're like, you know what? Like this.

SPEAKER_03

You know, that tomorrow will be better. And I know it's not the hugest, most profound thing to believe, but I spend a lot of my life being in situations that it seemed to be the most rational thing to expect failure. And um, and people predicted failure on my life, and I accepted it sometimes. And it's a line from John Eggwiman, don't fall asleep in your enemy's dream. And it's true. And and and and and I think that starts with not believing that tomorrow we'll be better. And I'm not saying that because I've had a lot of bad days and seems like a big bet. But I would start with it though, tomorrow we'll be better, you know. First time say it ever.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna I'm gonna stop us there because I like the uh I like the closing. Tomorrow will be better, especially coming from you.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

And it's something we all need to hear. Um Duane, I want to ask, how do people find you, support Freedom Reads? Um, what do you need from listeners, viewers? Yeah. Um I mean please please ask.

SPEAKER_03

Our work is done based on the support, the financial support, the donations that we receive. And you know, we get donations by you giving directly at Freedom Reads, spell it out, f-r-e-e-d-o-m, r-e-a-d-s dot or g. You can donate directly, but also you learning about our work and you telling people about our work because enthusiasm needs other people to support. So don't just support yourself. Um, ask two or three other people to support and ask them to ask others. And that will ensure that we could provide a freedom library, one for every person and every sale block in this country that's making it accessible, beautiful, life-changing literature as soon as they wake up and walk out of their bunks.

SPEAKER_00

How many jails are there in the U.S.? Like, what's the goal? You've got 500? What are we going for?

SPEAKER_03

So our goal is 20,000 freedom libraries. We have about 700 at this point, and that's because there are like 6,000 or so um jails and juvenile detention prisons and juvenile detention centers in the entire country. That doesn't touch jails or federal prisons. So our goal is 20,000.

SPEAKER_00

We're gonna help you get there.

SPEAKER_03

I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00

Dwayne, thank you. Bless you. I send you all my love. I'm so glad that synchronicity and the hand of God brought us together. Really.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

If this conversation moved you or inspired you, please follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if it really moved you, please leave us a five star review. It really does make a big difference. And finally, if someone came to mind while you were listening to this episode, please send it their way. Remember, new episodes drop weekly. I'll see you very soon.