13 Women: Parables from Prison Book

Introduction

Chapter One Diane: Paying for the Pleasures of Pot

A poet and young mother of two spends three painful years in prison for selling a small amount of marijuana to an undercover cop. She thought she was doing a favour for a friend.

Chapter Two Angelique: What’s Normal?

Born on a stormy Texas night, Angelique’s grandmother named her just after her father had sworn she was a child of the Devil. That was just the beginning of the high drama that was her outlaw life.

Chapter Three Lia: When Welfare Isn’t Enough

Welfare fraud is a common crime for which women are imprisoned. Lia was determined to go to college, and she defrauded the government to keep her daughters fed and housed.

Chapter Four Kathy: Just an Average American Girl

A classic set-up for breakdown—a young working-class couple in a shaky second marriage, three small children, a mother harried from work, family and money stresses—resulted in the death of Kathy’s stepson.

Chapter Five Norma: Sex Is Always the Headliner

Norma was expelled from nursing school in the 1950s, just before graduation, when it was discovered she was a lesbian. As an outcast, she roamed around writing bad cheques. Later, she began to write poems.

Chapter Six Vicki: The Low-Down High Life

Vicki was so determined to get over her drug addictions that she submitted to a frightening drug experiment by the prison doctor. The experiment didn’t work, but she discovered her own intelligence.

Chapter Seven Marie: I’m Not Afraid

After having been steadily brutalized by her husband, Marie stabbed him. He died, she went to prison, and she was not intimidated by anyone ever again.

Chapter Eight Mattie and Me: Crossing the Colour Line

A Black Muslim woman, Mattie was in prison most of her adult life on drug charges. She confronted racism in a prison classroom, with ramifications for a friendship and the feminist movement.

Chapter Nine Betty: Protector of the Forest

Betty Krawczyk, in her seventies, stands up to loggers, boldly blocking the road to protect the forest. Much admired as an author and an international environmentalist, she is also a tap dancer.

Chapter Ten Ann: Building a Revolution

Ann Hansen, as a member of the group dubbed the Squamish Five by the media, stood up to pornographers and those who would profit from war and pollution. She withstood prison like the revolutionary she is, and now she protects the environment.

Chapter Eleven Christine: Activist against U.S. Imperialism

Christine Lamont was standing up to the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of El Salvador when she aided and abetted in a kidnapping in Brazil to raise funds for the mass freedom movement.

Chapter Twelve First Nations Women: Prison as Colonization

A myriad of voices speak their truth about residential schools, foster homes and Canadian prisons.

Chapter Thirteen Gayle: The Politicization of Imprisonment

Gayle, serving a life sentence, now works with community groups, former prisoners and policy makers to protect prisoners’ rights.

Closing Reflections