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Book

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  • CENTRAL: Second Floor
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Becoming Ms. Burton : from prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women

Call Number

  • 921 B9748 (CEN)

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Publication Information

New York ; London : New Press, 2017.

Physical Description

xxiii, 304 pages ; 22 cm

Summary

Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over fifteen years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction. On her own, she eventually found a private drug rehabilitation facility. Once clean, Susan dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, operates five safe homes in Los Angeles that supply a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and their children--setting them on the track to education and employment rather than returns to prison. Becoming Ms. Burton not only humanizes the deleterious impact of mass incarceration, it also points the way to the kind of structural and policy changes that will offer formerly incarcerated people the possibility of a life of meaning and dignity.

Contents

  • Foreword / Michelle Alexander
  • Part I: Sue
  • Now what?
  • Land of opportunity
  • Daddy's girl
  • Hit the road
  • The sacrifice
  • Things you don't talk about
  • The life
  • From the skillet to the frying pan
  • No justice, no peace
  • A new drug
  • Incarceration nation
  • Collateral damage
  • The revolving door
  • The vicious cycle
  • Hurt people
  • A tale of two systems
  • A way out
  • Finding purpose
  • Part II: Mrs. Burton
  • A new way of life
  • The wall of no
  • Who's profiting from our pain?
  • Women and prison
  • A kindred spirit
  • Taking food off the table
  • Broke leg house
  • From trash to treasure
  • All of us or none
  • Treating the symptoms and the disease
  • The meaning of life
  • The women from Orange County
  • Being beholden
  • Living an impossible life
  • The house that discrimination built
  • Women organizing for justice and opportunity
  • What would Ms. Sybil Brand think?
  • Without representation
  • Prop 47
  • The movement
  • The arc bends toward justice.

Subjects

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