women prisoners

"Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over fifteen years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction. On her own, she eventually found a private drug rehabilitation facility. Once clean, Susan dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, operates five safe homes in Los Angeles that supply a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and their children--setting them on the track to education and employment rather than returns to prison. Becoming Ms. Burton not only humanizes the deleterious impact of mass incarceration, it also points the way to the kind of structural and policy changes that will offer formerly incarcerated people the possibility of a life of meaning and dignity.

The author tells of her fifteen-month experience while she was incarcerated in the infamous federal corrections institute in Danbury, Connecticut. A well-heeled Smith College alumnus, Piper Kerman had made a serious mistake which led to her arrest and experience with the American penal system. She met women from all walks of life who surprised her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious and also enraging, her story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison.

"For decades the story of Ravensbr?ck was hidden behind the Iron Curtain, and today it is still little known. Using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War and interviews with survivors who have never talked before, Sarah Helm has ventured into the heart of the camp, demonstrating for the reader in riveting detail how easily and quickly the unthinkable horror evolved. Far more than a catalog of atrocities, however, Ravensbr?ck is also a[n] ... account of what one survivor called 'the heroism, superhuman tenacity, and exceptional willpower to survive.' For every prisoner whose strength failed, another found the will to resist through acts of self-sacrifice and friendship, as well as sabotage, protest, and escape"--Amazon.com.

Sofia escapes from a Siberian labor camp in 1933 and sets out to honor a promise to find her friend Anna's lover Vasily, a passionate revolutionary, and after being nursed back to health by kind Gypsies, Sofia meets Mikhail Pashin, a man she could easily fall in love with if only she were sure he was not Vasily in disguise.

An anthology of writings by women prisoners in Connecticut's York Correctional Institution who participated in a writing workshop taught by novelist Wally Lamb.

Born in a rural Mexico region where girls are disguised as boys to avoid the attentions of traffickers, Ladydi dreams of a better life before moving to Mexico City, where she falls in love and ends up in a prison with other women who share her experiences.

The author provides an account of her thirteen months in a minimum security correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she was sent after being convicted on a ten-year-old charge of drug smuggling and money laundering in 2003, offering insights into the heirarchies, communities, and friendships that characterize the women's prison.