“Essential reading” on some of the most egregious human rights violations within women’s prisons in the United States (Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black) Here, in their own words, thirteen women recount their lives leading up to incarceration and their harrowing struggle for survival once insides. Among the narrators: Theresa, who spent years believing her health and life were in danger, being aggressively treated with a variety of medications for a disease she never had. Only on her release did she discover that an incompetent prison medical bureaucracy had misdiagnosed her with HIV. Anna, who repeatedly warned apathetic prison guards about a suicidal cellmate. When the woman killed herself, the guards punished Anna in an attempt to silence her and hide their own negligence. Teri, who was sentenced to up to fifty years for aiding and abetting a robbery when she was only seventeen. A prison guard raped Teri, who was still a teenager, and the assaults continued for years with the complicity of other staff.

“An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship [and] solitary confinement in the United States.” —New York Times Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day, in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived at all was a feat of extraordinary endurance. That he emerged whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit. While behind bars in his early twenties, Albert was inspired to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a fifty-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when, on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement. Without a shred of evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice. Decades passed before Albert was finally released in February 2016. Sustained by the solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. Solitary is a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the United States and around the world.

If you have a father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother, auntie or any close relative or friend incarcerated in any form of secure lockdown, one of your first thoughts is probably, "when will I get to see them again free?" Now just imagine, if your loved one physically ends up imprisoned (or have even escaped the system) but they have been locked up spiritually their entire life? In this book, I will share my powerful testimony that will demonstrate the power of God that set me free both physically and spiritually.

"My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us." Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary duties, for years Dalits were believed to be racially inferior and polluted by nature and were therefore forced to live in isolated communities. Pawar grew up on the rugged Konkan coast, near Mumbai, where the Mahar Dalits were housed in the center of the village so the upper castes could summon them at any time. As Pawar writes, "the community grew up with a sense of perpetual insecurity, fearing that they could be attacked from all four sides in times of conflict. That is why there has always been a tendency in our people to shrink within ourselves like a tortoise and proceed at a snail's pace." Pawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi, she has found fame in all of India. In this frank and intimate memoir, Pawar not only shares her tireless effort to surmount hideous personal tragedy but also conveys the excitement of an awakening consciousness during a time of profound political and social change.

The number of women in United States prisons has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and has in proportion outpaced that of men’s incarceration. Despite these numbers, incarcerated women, and women lifers specifically, represent a relatively small percentage of the overall correctional and lifer populations. As such, women lifers are easy to overlook, discount, and diminish as such a small group. Many women lifers perceive themselves as a forgotten group; most often those whom we “lock up” and “throw away the key”. They feel excluded from prison programming within and from their own families outside. They feel stigmatized by staff and other women in prison. Aging fast, many have real fears about declining health and losing family members over lengthy stretches of time. However, women lifers are some of the most resilient and strongest women who survive life in prison with the support of each other and religious faith, often transforming themselves in the process of doing time. While most of the women had extensive histories of trauma, abuse, and mental health issues, few had prior experience as offenders. Despite the term “lifer”, many of these women will be released from prison after serving long sentences. Beyond this basic profile, there is much more to learn and share about the lives of women lifers. Focusing on women’s pathways into prison, the ways they cope with life behind bars, and their diverse reentry needs, Meredith Dye and Ronald Aday give voice to women lifers and place their experiences within the larger context of penal harm policies. The authors look at their physical and mental health, family connections, adjustment to prison, prison supports and activities, and experiences with abuse/trauma; while also looking at the growing public and policy concerns over mass incarceration in general. Women Lifers provides insight into the lives of incarcerated women before, during, and following a life sentence, especially the population of those serving life sentences. With the growing numbers of women lifers in the United States, the authors emphasize the importance for the public and policymakers to understand the unique circumstances that brought these women to prison, the policies that keep them there, and the major challenges they face in carving out a successful life in prison and beyond.

Tyanantar is a story of an ordinary woman whose husband suddenly leaves her and goes away on his own quest of the meaning of life. Completely unprepared for this, the woman is at first stunned but gradually comes to accept his decision and her own isolation and loneliness. In the process she learns to live her life on her own terms. This journey teaches her to be independent and humane. The woman learns to recognize the meaning of human relationships. Her own relationships - with her friends, her family members and her own son - are put to an acute scrutiny. She realizes how fickle, middle class sensibility and values are and she exposes the sham of people around her who consider family a sacrosanct institution and duty as a vocation of a married woman. They judge every woman in terms of her faithfulness to her husband and her devotion to the role of a wife and a devoted mother that tradition has carved out for her. The woman refuses to be a prisoner of these straightjackets, learns the values of truth and honour, abandons the fakeness of her previous beliefs and becomes more humane and understanding. She develops a new awareness of her own body as well and emerges as a mature adult who has learnt to live life on her own terms.

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

A 16 year old girl is taken away from her mother's dying bed at the hospital by four armed Iranian government agents. She is arrested and held captive in Irans most feared prison, Evin. This begins her agonizing journey through life. As a political prisoner, her crimes are reading books that the Iranian government deems banned and supporting opposition parties that openly criticize the regime for violating basic human rights. She is being terrorized for her belief that regardless of race, gender, belief system, religion, and social and financial status, people should be free to live life without restraint or fear of retribution. This is a true story. The young girl has big dreams and an even bigger heart. The girl loves school and has an unquenchable thirst for learning. The girl thinks she can change the world, and wants to speak for those who could not speak for themselves. As you turn the pages of this book, you will read what marked the most significant chapters in her life starting early in her childhood in Iran to present time living in Canada with her family.

The first Dalit autobiography to be published, Baluta caused a sensation when it first appeared, in Marathi, in 1978. It quickly acquired the status of a classic of modern Indian literature and was also a bestseller in Hindi and other major languages. This is the first time that it has been translated into English. Set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra of the 1940s and '50s, it describes in shocking detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence. But it also speaks of the pride and courage of the Dalit community that often fought back for dignity. Most unusually, Baluta is also a frank account of the author's own failings and contradictions-his passions, prejudices and betrayals-as also those of some leading lights of the Dalit movement. In addition, it is a rare record of life in Maharashtra's villages and in the slums, chawls and gambling dens of Mumbai.