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  • The Marshall Project

    I Taught Myself How to Read in Prison. Then I Sued the System and Won

    “Just like the rest of life, everything about the court system is a puzzle I’ve had to piece together.”
    by Andre Jacobs May 24, 2019 5 minutes

    I entered prison at 15, lost and illiterate. A lot of the guys I knew were too ashamed to admit that they didn’t know how to read, but I wasn’t. I taught myself how. I would take a novel and look up every word that stumped me. My first year in prison, I read the same book, “The Last Don,” over and over for about nine months.

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    All of that work learning how to read helped me when I went back to school while in prison. It’s also helped me become a successful “jailhouse lawyer” representing myself in court. Over the years, I’ve won hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state,

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