399 pagesPimps make the best librarians. Psycho killers, the worst. Ditto con men.
So begins this memoir. It all started when Avi Steinberg graduated from college and wasn't sure what to do with himself. Though he graduated from one of the most distinguished schools in the country--Harvard--he felt a lot of career-related pressure from the extraordinarily high standards of the Orthodox Jewish community he grew up. When he saw an ad in the paper for a prison librarian, he decided to give it a try. What Avi thought would just pay the bills and provide insurance until he figured out what he wanted to do ended up changing his life. Nothing could have prepared him for the bizarre culture he'd become part of in the tough Boston prison. There was the anxious pimp who solicited Steinberg’s help in writing a memoir. A passionate gangster who dreamed of hosting a cooking show called "Thug Sizzle." A disgruntled officer who instigated a major feud over a Post-it note. A doomed ex-stripper who asked Steinberg to orchestrate a reunion with her estranged son, who was an inmate himself. Some of it's funny and some of it's heartbreaking, but it's all fascinating. In fact, I loved this entire memoir. I find prison culture in general very interesting, even more so from a librarian's perspective since I am a librarian myself. I really like Avi's writing style; I think he uses the perfect tones for both the touching and the hilarious parts, and he does a great job of humanizing the inmates without being cheesy about it. In some cases, he has to reconcile the kind, interesting people he gets to know in the library with the violent crimes he knows they have committed. He's honest about his struggles to give the inmates a chance without being flippant about the things they've done or completely letting his guard down. This is a book that will stick with me for a while, and I hope Avi Steinberg writes more books!
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