The words that saved John Dwayne Bunn

He'd grown up in Brooklyn in the early 1990s, where his world had revolved around back flipping onto broken mattresses with his friends. He lived in the Kingsborough Projects, an area seething with crime, gun violence and racial tension, and amidst this chaos, no one had noticed that he was illiterate. While in prison, alone, afraid and desperate to tell his mother how much he loved her, he began teaching himself to read. Through letter writing and reading, he discovered a new kind of freedom that would help him get through this nightmare. Image: John Bunn Credit: Great Big Story