Today was the first day of our book drive outside the Stanford bookstore for the Prisoner Literature Project.  We had a surprisingly generous day and many people, after learning we’d be there for the week promised to return tomorrow with books to donate.  Most people that stopped to talk to us, more often professors and workers rather than students, were curious where the books were going.  "They are going to San Bruno Jail." 

People wanted to know this, I think, because they knew someone in prison somewhere and perhaps were wondering, after seeing our sign in front of the table, if somehow by chance, the book they’d like to hand to us could one day find its way to their loved one. 

A woman told us of a close friend of her husband who shortly after arriving in the United States from Korea was involved in a criminal charge that has now sentenced him to life in prison in Pasadena.  Her English was broken and she pieced together sentences with difficulty, but also with the utter conviction one conveys when one relives a story.  She paused for breath and stood still, then asked me, "are there Koreans in San Bruno jail?"   

A possibility: if she could come to the aid of someone from her home who is now away from home and locked away from everyone, her question wondered, was this act possible at all? 

Afterwards she walked away from the bookstore watching the ground a few feet in front of her and thinking again, maybe for the 100th time, of her husband’s close friend.