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Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons
Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures.
Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.
Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.
351 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 9, 2015
The beauty of this book lies in its ability to humanize women who are incarcerated and force the reader to understand that, no matter how much society may demonize all those who are in prison, it is nearly impossible to do so when we understand their story.
The powerful portraits of some of the women interviewed in the book, combined with staggering statistics such as, "6 in 10 women in prisons have been sexually abused," make for a very convincing case that there is a desperate need for the reformation of the penal system.
My criticism of the book is that it reads like a study and the voice of the author is that as prominent as I generally like. Although I understand that the author wanted to keep her own voice and own thoughts out of her writing, I felt that at times was the book was more clinical than it could have been. I also didn't particularly get a lot from the way the book was structured. Dividing the book onto the types of literature that the inmates read often lead to overlap and redundancy.
Overall I enjoyed the book because it offered moments of absolute brilliance where I needed to put the book down and exhale before I could continue reading. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the topics of reading, women's prisons or the penal system.
The powerful portraits of some of the women interviewed in the book, combined with staggering statistics such as, "6 in 10 women in prisons have been sexually abused," make for a very convincing case that there is a desperate need for the reformation of the penal system.
My criticism of the book is that it reads like a study and the voice of the author is that as prominent as I generally like. Although I understand that the author wanted to keep her own voice and own thoughts out of her writing, I felt that at times was the book was more clinical than it could have been. I also didn't particularly get a lot from the way the book was structured. Dividing the book onto the types of literature that the inmates read often lead to overlap and redundancy.
Overall I enjoyed the book because it offered moments of absolute brilliance where I needed to put the book down and exhale before I could continue reading. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the topics of reading, women's prisons or the penal system.
January 13, 2011
Though this is not a reading community who would be of obvious interest to me, what drew me to this volume was not only the ethnographic methodology of its author but the book's stated purpose to explore a wide variety of roles that books and reading play within a specific context. Rather than arguing that books mean a single thing to women prisoners, Sweeney instead uncovers how they not only mean different things to different people, but can be evaluated differently by even the same person -- depending on the context in which they are read. Sweeney's work is sweeping and thorough, but what is most remarkable about the effort is the attention and care she pays to her subjects. She is a wholly sympathetic ethnographer: aware of her own biases, how her role as a researcher might have influenced the answers of her informants, and (most importantly) invested in her project for far more than its academic potential. This monograph should be essential reading for anyone interested in books and literature, as it not only provides insight into a novel community of readers, but presents a fully-formed picture of their habits and practices. Moreover, it will appeal to a number of other research communities, giving a human face to case studies in criminal justice and law.
May 26, 2019
This book builds much on her previous work,The Story Within Us. (Several of the women interviewed in that work were featured in this one.)The women, considering their circumstances, articulated their opinions soundly. The discussion and interview process edified Sweeney and the prisoners:"... I was buoyed by the realization that it meant a great deal, to some women, to be greeted by a friendly face who cared about them and considered their thoughts and stories important enough to record (Sweeney 249)." I think many individuals ought to read this book to gain knowledge and empathy for those incarcerated.
September 6, 2011
Through extensive personal interviews and book groups with incarcerated women, Sweeney reveals how women access and read books while in prison. She looks at what women are reading, what they like to read, why they like to read it, and how they interpret certain texts in light of their pasts. Sweeney is incredibly humanizing to the women she is studying, and focuses above all things on their reading lives. This book is fascinating. I can't stop thinking about it.
September 22, 2017
The introduction to this book is its strength. So many great resources and a fantastic outline of the awful history of our system of mass incarceration. The actual interviews were a lot less interesting. I thought there was a layer of analysis that didn't really match up with and went beyond what the women were saying. Not to say their words weren't deep or powerful, it's just obvious they themselves aren't academic researchers studying their own reading habits and it seemed like a stretch.
September 25, 2017
Megan Sweeney did an extensive sociological study in a few women's prisons, holding reading groups and conducting private interviews with women about their reading habits. In Reading is my window, she presents the results of her study as an academic work. The first chapter gives a comprehensive history and literature review of attitudes towards reading in prisons over the last two centuries. The following five chapters address access to books in contemporary prisons, victimization stories, urban fiction, self-help, and the impact on the women of participating in the study and having discussions about reading. There are many quotes from the women in the study as well as two in-depth profiles.
Reading is my window opened a window for me into the inner life of women in prison. I had rarely given thought before to the reading habits of women in prison or their access to books. Sweeney does an excellent job of humanizing the women in her study -- showing how they are multi-dimensional humans with many varied thoughts, feels, desires, and ambitions. They read to escape, self-educate, heal, understand how they got where they are, and figure out where they are going. I felt embarrassed and chastised by the extent to which some of this was surprising to me. I also learned about some genres (urban fiction) and books I had never heard of.
The broader context for Sweeney's study is immensely frustrating and disturbing, and she touches on that as well. Access to books in prison is difficult and restricted, and many books are banned. I feel strongly that banning books is infantalizing to imprisoned women, implying that they cannot be trusted to read thoughtfully and with a complex ability to process and integrate. As Sweeney's study illustrates, women in prison do have these abilities and carry them out in a myriad of ways. They are able to selectively apply what they read to their own lives, taking away what feels relevant and leaving the rest. Her study also emphasizes the extent to which women in prison want to improve themselves and have a better life when they are released, but the prison structure holds them back from being able to reach their full potential. It is clear that the current criminal justice system is for punishment, not rehabilitation, and any rehabilitation that women do manage to achieve is going to be due to their individual inner strength in the face of many barriers.
Overall, Reading is my window lends an important perspective on the complex issue of criminal justice. My only criticism is that it is not accessible to a wide audience due to being quite dense and academic. I skimmed the introduction and first chapter, because I found the detailed references and background information tedious and not necessary to get what I wanted out of the book. The remaining chapters were more captivating since they focused on the study itself, but they still contained many academic references. Sweeney clearly did extensive background research and situates quotes from the women in relation to quotes from the academic literature on prisons, reading, victimization, self-help, and more. This didn't add much more me and made it denser to get through. However, Sweeney is an academic and clearly she wanted to present an academic work as the result of her study.
Reading is my window opened a window for me into the inner life of women in prison. I had rarely given thought before to the reading habits of women in prison or their access to books. Sweeney does an excellent job of humanizing the women in her study -- showing how they are multi-dimensional humans with many varied thoughts, feels, desires, and ambitions. They read to escape, self-educate, heal, understand how they got where they are, and figure out where they are going. I felt embarrassed and chastised by the extent to which some of this was surprising to me. I also learned about some genres (urban fiction) and books I had never heard of.
The broader context for Sweeney's study is immensely frustrating and disturbing, and she touches on that as well. Access to books in prison is difficult and restricted, and many books are banned. I feel strongly that banning books is infantalizing to imprisoned women, implying that they cannot be trusted to read thoughtfully and with a complex ability to process and integrate. As Sweeney's study illustrates, women in prison do have these abilities and carry them out in a myriad of ways. They are able to selectively apply what they read to their own lives, taking away what feels relevant and leaving the rest. Her study also emphasizes the extent to which women in prison want to improve themselves and have a better life when they are released, but the prison structure holds them back from being able to reach their full potential. It is clear that the current criminal justice system is for punishment, not rehabilitation, and any rehabilitation that women do manage to achieve is going to be due to their individual inner strength in the face of many barriers.
Overall, Reading is my window lends an important perspective on the complex issue of criminal justice. My only criticism is that it is not accessible to a wide audience due to being quite dense and academic. I skimmed the introduction and first chapter, because I found the detailed references and background information tedious and not necessary to get what I wanted out of the book. The remaining chapters were more captivating since they focused on the study itself, but they still contained many academic references. Sweeney clearly did extensive background research and situates quotes from the women in relation to quotes from the academic literature on prisons, reading, victimization, self-help, and more. This didn't add much more me and made it denser to get through. However, Sweeney is an academic and clearly she wanted to present an academic work as the result of her study.
June 11, 2013
So who's your favorite academic? Mine's Megan Sweeney. I never even considered having a "favorite academic", but if she were giving a reading around here, I'd get front row seats and hang around for the afterparty. She does everything that academic rigor requires, but she's so smooth and just and honest you might forget this is a research study.
Sweeney explores the reading habits of women prisoners in three different state facilities. She examines the appeal of three genres that women readers seem particularly drawn to: narratives of victimization, urban fiction, and self-help/inspirational texts, and she also observes how determined readers approach unfamiliar genres and styles. Her last chapter, entitled "Encounters", refers to how readers continue to draw from their reading through group discussion, but the title also winks at an approach to restorative justice, still in its experimental stages in current correctional practice. I'm keenly interested in exploring the ways reader theory overlaps and contradicts the practice of restorative justice, especially through an interpretation of empathy. Reader theory has long accepted that empathy is an important aspect in creating appeal -- empathy with character, setting, the author, other readers, the intersubjectivity of the reading relationship. Empathy also plays a role in successful restorative justice practice -- opening up the relationship between the offender and the victim, to see both sides, and the harm that affects all players. But I imagine empathy looks different through these two lenses, and Sweeney has done a masterful job in elucidating the role of empathy in a reader caught between both worlds; a reader who reads to transform herself, but prevented the agency to design her own justice.
I know I will be returning to this work again and again.
Sweeney explores the reading habits of women prisoners in three different state facilities. She examines the appeal of three genres that women readers seem particularly drawn to: narratives of victimization, urban fiction, and self-help/inspirational texts, and she also observes how determined readers approach unfamiliar genres and styles. Her last chapter, entitled "Encounters", refers to how readers continue to draw from their reading through group discussion, but the title also winks at an approach to restorative justice, still in its experimental stages in current correctional practice. I'm keenly interested in exploring the ways reader theory overlaps and contradicts the practice of restorative justice, especially through an interpretation of empathy. Reader theory has long accepted that empathy is an important aspect in creating appeal -- empathy with character, setting, the author, other readers, the intersubjectivity of the reading relationship. Empathy also plays a role in successful restorative justice practice -- opening up the relationship between the offender and the victim, to see both sides, and the harm that affects all players. But I imagine empathy looks different through these two lenses, and Sweeney has done a masterful job in elucidating the role of empathy in a reader caught between both worlds; a reader who reads to transform herself, but prevented the agency to design her own justice.
I know I will be returning to this work again and again.
March 23, 2026
A tough but necessary read. Megan Sweeney frames a difficult topic in a more approachable way and I really enjoyed how thorough her research was. This went well beyond just interviewing women and Sweeney managed to give voice to so many women who have repeatedly been told they do not matter in every aspect of their lives. Even though this book is now 15 years old I find that not much has changed within the penal system and it still remains a place of oppression and not rehabilitation. I hope one day this changes and it is people like Megan Sweeney leading the charge.
October 15, 2020
Loved the twists and turns. Kept me guessing until the end.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews