PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewIt’s clear that Austen sees plenty wrong with our system of corrections, but he doesn’t whine with advocacy. His style is informative with little sap, and he manages to make sympathetic characters out of violent men ... Austen bounces around, weaving...stories through chapters that zoom out and capture just about every facet of the prison system and its failures.
Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau
PositiveThe AtlanticThe authors create a vivid picture of what life on the island is like ... I appreciated the juxtaposed perspectives, which capture the complexity of life on the island.
Keri Blakinger
PositiveVulture[Blakinger\'s] book’s prose is utterly readable. Its structure braids chapters about Blakinger’s jail time with backstory until her past catches up and we seamlessly find ourselves in prison alongside her. With Corrections in Ink, you get what you came for. In some of the flashback chapters, we’re yanked into wild scenes ... At times, I felt Blakinger was apologizing for writing about her lived experience in a criminal-justice system that disproportionately impacts people of color. While white privilege did help her avoid scrutiny from the law, it also enabled a decade of uninterrupted hard-drug use. Blakinger’s privilege could easily have landed her among the astonishing number of dead white Americans who, like my brother Eugene, have overdosed during America’s generational opioid epidemic — a rate that exceeded the one for Black Americans until very recently ... To me, the fact that Blakinger has made a career of criticizing the institution that probably saved her life is the paradox of the book, one that she doesn’t acknowledge ... For me, the lingering conflict in the book is when Blakinger telescopes out from her specific story and examines systemic racism in prison and policing, then brings it back to herself ... These journalistic digressions are informative, but the way she inserts them takes away from her own difficult experiences ... I wanted Blakinger to write more personally about her privilege: It must have struck constant cords of shame in her, as it has in me, to have had tremendous opportunities and yet land in a place where most had none ... The formerly incarcerated folks who are creative enough to recognize the moment we’re in — aspiring poets, journalists, filmmakers, podcasters — must learn that leaning into the internal and external conflicts of the convict experience will give them an advantage. Blakinger realizes this, and it’s why she has succeeded.
Elizabeth Greenwood
PositiveVultureSometimes Greenwood gets bogged down by digressions ... Most of the time, Greenwood handles...background well, getting back to the characters just when you’re missing them ... Even though I’ve had plenty of firsthand experiences with prison relationships, I didn’t know about any of these organizations. My experience and perspective were limited to my own plight ... I found one part of Greenwood’s book particularly troubling. She watches Met While Incarcerated, a Canadian documentary that dramatizes Benny’s crime—and then she starts second-guessing her own reportage ... when I found myself reading a book about couples who got to experience conjugal visits in prison, I expected the pages to reveal a bit more erotic heat. Yet I understand how adding spice could seem exploitative, too ... While Greenwood doesn’t delve into the intimacy of the flesh, she does come to a realization about the complicated intimacies of these relationships ... What she learns, and explains in beautiful prose, is that love can indeed be found in the ugliest of places.
