2011: Book 25

The Truth Shall Set You Free by Sally Lowe Whitehead


272 pages

Completed 3/17/11

The memoir of a sixteen-year-old newlywed turned mother-of-six with a gay husband, you cannot help but be moved by this book. Knowing ahead of time that it was a book that revolved deeply around religion, I nonetheless was exhausted by all the talk of God. Nearly a decade immersed in Fundamentalism, the reader cannot help but forsee the judgement to be thrown down upon Sally and her outed husband.

That being said, this is one of the first books in a long while whose writing instilled emotion; if nothing else, Whitehead can put on paper true feeling. The epilogue was an extra I was not expecting, but oh-so-glad was included. If anything, I wish the memoir would have continued from one of their children's point of view.

2011: Book 17

Couldn't Keep it to Myself: Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters by Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution


368 pages

Completed 2/25/11

I am a huge Wally Lamb fan; She's Come Undone and The Hour I First Believed are two of my favorites. After reading Lamb's I'll Fly Away a few years ago, I realized I had missed the first of the York prison stories in this compilation.

A collection of autobiographical and fictional stories from women in prison for various offenses - assault, homicide, manslaughter - the writing workshops run by Lamb in this Connecticut prison allowed these women to have a voice - most for the first time. With an underlying theme of abuse and sexual assault, these women's stories do not ask for pity or deny their crimes. Instead they are forced to confront the scariest thing - themselves. Some are joyful stories; most are horrific.

The voices that these women are able to express only through writing is indescribable; Lamb has offered them a way for their souls to be free, if only for a brief time. As the final line in the book by Dale Griffith, a writing teacher at York, so wonderfully puts: "My body's still in prison, but my spirit's finally free."