Maria Montalvo speaks with emotion, her eyes shining as she recounts her reading experiences. She says she especially enjoys books by Isabel Allende, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Erika L. Sánchez and John Grisham because, in her words, “reading makes you wiser and you learn how people live in other countries. It takes your mind to other places you can’t travel to.”

Montalvo isn’t an ordinary reader. During her incarceration at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, a prison in New Jersey, she has participated in the activities of Freedom Reads, a nonprofit organization that has been promoting reading in U.S. prisons since 2020.

“Freedom Reads has brought books on different topics, and it’s very important to read because it makes you wiser,” Montalvo, 60, said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. “Books change the prison climate; they change the way people think about themselves. This opens your mind and makes you want to change.”