Running the Books

Here is a novel way to deal with your personal problems: become a prison librarian. Steinberg, a Harvard graduate, felt that he was not living up to expectations. Almost as therapy, he took a job as a prison librarian in a tough Boston prison. Like Gulliver, he now tells about his two years in this foreign environment. First, he had to confront the challenge of bringing literature to people who may never see the light of day again. Then, in a creative writing course he taught for inmates, he listened to their stories, reflecting on his own life as he did so. When it finally struck him that he was an unwilling jailer he left the job. There are some striking similarities between Steinberg's memoir and Piper Kerman's Orange Is the New Black, with both memoirists Ivy League graduates unlikely to be destined for prison, Steinberg as librarian, Kerman as an inmate.