This is the autobiography of a still young elite bulimic self-loathing, New York State budding figure skater and Cornell student who descended into the depths of depravity, heroin addiction, prostitution, and poverty. She then served two years in county jail and various state prisons before cleaning up and dedicating much of her life to prison reform throughout the United States as a journalist documenting conditions in prisons and a dysfunctional corrections system.
The title has a double meaning in referring to corrections facilities and her love of writing and solving crosswords in ink. She provides a stark contrast between the local county jail in upstate New York and the more varied and crueller state prison system, although neither are at all focused on rehabilitation and corrections and both are beset with asinine rules, arbitrary cruel practices and sadistic staff.
The women inmates are certainly not portrayed as angelic victims and some of their deceptions to get drugs behind bars are ingenious; the jobs of guards and supervisors must be stressful as well, with the constant threat of violence. It seems that most of the inmates, including the author did not forgo sexual pleasures while incarcerated and became “Gay for the stay; straight for the gate” taking on transient clandestine same-sex liaisons that were never meant to be more than for the moment.
I can easily understand her consternation over the side-effects of her year-long treatment with interferon and ribavirin in 2010 for hepatitis C, having heard about these hundreds of times from patients, although my wife/nurse practitioner bore the brunt of their ire, but Blakinger never tells readers if it rid her of hepatitis C. (It often didn’t work and has since been replaced by safer more effective treatment with fewer side-effects.)
The chronology of her decline can be difficult to follow as chapters skip back and forth over the years between 2000 and 2012. Although foul language and graphic pornographic depictions may be totally appropriate in describing her troubled teen life, she seems to relish use of such language, even in describing inanimate objects and events that have nothing to do with body functions. She only obliquely addresses the controversy of viewing addictions as mental illnesses vs matters to be dealt with by the law.
It this tempting to assume that Canadian jails and Corrections Canada facilitates and staff must be more efficient, humanitarian and rehabilitation-oriented than those in the U.S, but such conclusions are probably smug unwarranted generalizations. I dealt with a lot of convicts and ex-convicts in the past and do not miss them, but they are often victims of fate and deserve respect as full human beings. This book puts a human face on them and gives readers deep insight into their plight. As an educational read, it is useful; fun it is not.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks, Book Browse.
The Passionate Reader 