Fact and Fantasy

At Books Beyond Bars, we receive an incredibly wide variety of book requests. Within this broad range, however, there are a few titles that come up again and again. We decided to analyze the requests we received over two months and compile a list of our most highly requested titles.

Before we share our top 25, here are a few things that surprised us about the results:

1. Robert Greene is EXTREMELY popular.

Out of our list of 25 titles, six are by Robert Greene, a self-help writer who is the most banned author in American prisons (his books are not banned in New York State prisons). In a video in which he discusses carceral censorship, Greene says of his book The 48 Laws of Power:

“When the book first came out, I received a lot of correspondence from prisoners telling me how much the book helped them navigate the often terrifying and tricky environments that they found themselves in in prison where they had no idea who was really on their side and who was against them.”

2. The top urban fiction books requested are by women writers: Sister Souljah and Ashley Antoinette.

Sister Souljah, author of The Coldest Winter Ever, made a name for herself as a member of rap group Public Enemy and as an activist who advocated for unhoused families and spoke out against the racially motivated violence affecting Black Americans.

In an article for The Nation, Tracy Sherrod, who first championed The Coldest Winter Ever, says of the novel:

“Souljah changed the landscape of Black women’s fiction, because the characters that she put on the page were people that city centers were definitely starting to see, and households were experiencing the repercussions of the drug culture. [ . . . ] Souljah took us right into the mentality, the consumerism [straight through] to incarceration and how this culture was destroying our families.”

Ashley Antoinette is best known for her series Ethic and the series she co-wrote with her husband JaQuavis Coleman, The Cartel. In an article about her and her husband’s success co-authoring urban fiction books under the pseudonym Ashley and JaQuavis, Antoinette, reflects on her place among Black writers:

“You have Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, James Baldwin—all of these traditional black writers, who wrote about the struggles of racism, injustice, inequality… We’re writing about the struggle as it happens now. It’s just a different struggle. I’m telling my story. I’m telling the struggle of a black girl from Flint, Michigan, who grew up on welfare.”

Above: Ashley Antoinette

3. Our most popular role-playing game book requests were for Dungeons and Dragons titles.

We receive a lot of requests for role-playing game books, both for Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons. Role-playing games are a very popular way to pass the time in prison, and are an activity that can have tremendous social and psychological benefits for players, as highlighted by an article about incarcerated D&D players on death row by the Marshall Project in partnership with the New York Times Magazine.

4. Reference books dominate the list.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts is a book that comes up again and again, a resource that many incarcerated people find invaluable in an environment with no internet and restricted access to information.

Dictionaries are also at the top of the list, with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary being the most-requested. In an interview with PEN America, Moira Marquis states “Dictionaries are the number one request. People teach themselves how to read from the dictionary. In the absence of educational programming and literacy support, dictionaries are the only resource people have.”

Requests for legal dictionaries like Black’s Law Dictionary and legal reference books such as A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual are reflective of the countless hours that many of our clients spend doing legal research, often referred to as practicing “jailhouse law.” In Jailhouse Lawyers, Mumia Abu-Jamal describes jailhouse law as “law written with stubs of pencils… law learned in a stew of bitterness, under the constant threat of violence, in places where millions of people live, but millions of other wish to ignore or forget.”

Our Top 25 Titles, in reverse order:

GQ Magazine (men’s magazine)
Dragon Ball Series by Akira Toriyama (manga)
The Prosperity Bible by Napoleon Hill (self-help)
Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin (fantasy)
Ethic Series by Ashley Antoinette (urban fiction)
Midnight Series by Sister Souljah (urban fiction)
The Daily Laws by Robert Greene (self-help)
People Magazine (entertainment)
The Holy Qur’an (religion)
The Gray Man Series by Mark Greaney (thriller)
The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene (self-help)
Kite Magazine (hip-hop)
Men’s Health Magazine (fitness)
Dungeons and Dragons Books (role-playing game manuals)
Mastery by Robert Greene (self-help)
Black’s Law Dictionary (legal)
A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual (legal)
The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene (self-help)
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (self-help)
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (reference)
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki (personal finance)
The Cartel Series by Ashley and JaQuavis Coleman (urban fiction)
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (self-help)
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene (self-help)
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2024 by Sarah Janssen (reference)

Want to purchase one of these titles for our clients? Using our top 26 most highly requested titles, we created a special wish list with Merritt Bookstore:

https://merrittbooks.com/gift-registry/s1S4Jgnp7hA