Jennifer
Rating:
Review
Wally Lamb has been volunteering his time by teaching writing classes to imprisoned women at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. His writing and teaching genius has brought together beautiful and healing stories of several women while they've been incarcerated. Each of the stories in this book are the same, but so different from each other. Sad similarities include incest, rape, and beatings from fathers, then later, husbands. These stories have allowed each of the women that have written them a chance to heal, learn from their past mistakes, forgive and understand the demons of their past. This book is guaranteed to make you sad, inspired, and hopefully, have a better understanding and some compassion of how someone could end up incarcerated after an act of crime.
Best Line:
"But being locked up is better than being dead. I thank my god and my good luck that the Duracell battery stuck up my butt hasn't conked out yet."
Kim
Rating:
Review
This book may have novelist Wally Lamb's (
She's Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True) name on it, but it's far from a work of fiction. Mr. Lamb began teaching a writing workshop to some female inmates in the late 1990s, and it went over big. So big that a number of the inmates' stories went from a small, prison-only publication to being featured in this book. All of the stories are well-written, not because they have fancy adjectives or use obscure words, but because each was composed from the heart instead of the head. All of the stories have heartbreaking scenarios of women being physically and sexually abused as children, leading to lives filled with violence, hurt and shame. Every one of these women had major players in the early lives (parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles) that failed them too, in enormous ways. Even if you've never had so much as a speeding ticket, I highly recommend this book. It's important to recognize the thin line that separates each of us when it comes to unresolved pain and anger.
Best Line:
"No part of us is valueless."
