Henry Bemis' Dark Secret: we deal in books banned in North Carolina prisons

Percolating through the news these days is renewed interest in how society demands that millions of Americans, mostly minority, be locked up for years and given little to do, think, or learn except the cultivation of muscle, bad tattoos, and resentments. The latest flashpoint is a book called The New Jim Crow, which a number of states adjudged bad for minority inmates to read and learn how the system seems to prefer making them inmates over majority-population offenders.

IndyWeek has looked over the NC prisons' list of 480 banned prison books:

DPS policy lets a facility prohibit an inmate from receiving a publication for a range of reasons that largely fall under the umbrella of disrupting "institutional order, security and safety" and "inmate rehabilitation." Sexually explicit material (Booty! Pirate Queens Volume 1 is prohibited in N.C. prisons) as well as publications depicting violence (A Game of Thrones Volume 1) or insurrection (The Anti-Government Movement Guidebook) can be banned. How-to information on manufacturing weapons, drugs. or poisons, disabling communication or security systems, or escaping from confinement may also be grounds for prohibition. Large, hardcover books may also be banned (Encyclopedia of North Carolina), with an exception made for legal and religious publications. 

However, according to policy, "no publication or material will be withheld solely on the basis of its appeal to a particular ethnic, racial or religious group. A publication may not be rejected solely because its content is religious, philosophical, political, social or sexual, or because its content is unpopular or repugnant." 

The most recent Disapproved Publications Report includes 480 titles prohibited in the past twelve months. Among the more unusual inclusions: Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, because it features the rape of a minor; Prison Ramen, a book of ramen recipes devised by inmate-cooks that apparently includes instructions on how to stow a razor blade; Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, written by the two women who in 2013 famously escaped ten years of captivity in a Cleveland man's home; and the May 2017 edition of Elle Décor and the October 2017 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, for reasons unknown.

As long as you plan to avoid prison, Henry Bemis Books has a lot of oversized, heavy books you won't be able to see in the slammer, lest you try to use them to clock a guard upside the head, among them, the banned Encyclopedia of North Carolina (which, with some windup, could lay a grown man out cold):

Powell, William S., editor, Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 1st ed., 1st printing, 2006). Eminent state historian William Powell spent fifteen years corralling the contributions of over 550 writers in over 2,000 entries. A must for any North Carolina collector or researcher. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, fine condition. Folio, 1314 pp. HBB price: $40 (shipping charges may apply depending on distance).