Chicago Books to Women in Prison

Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons
Megan Sweeney. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010. 332 pp.

Since you’re reading our blog and are interested in the work we do, you’ll want to know about this book.

Sweeney is an assistant professor of English and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The book is based on individual interviews and group discussions with 94 women (mostly African American) in three institutions in North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. She organized reading groups focusing on narratives of victimization, African American urban fiction, and self-help and inspiration texts, and explored how “women use reading to counter the ‘social death’ that imprisonment entails, and to achieve critical insight, self-development, and even transformation.” Continue reading ‘Read a Terrific Book About Reading in Women’s Prisons’