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Snakes and Ladders
It was no surprise that Angela Williams went to jail. A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. But after serving a short sentence for theft as a teenager, she worked hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela was studying, teaching, providing a stable home for her son, and finally feeling like she'd got her life together. Then she got hit by a postie bike. Police realised that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she'd thought was in her distant past.However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a scared, damaged nineteen-year-old, she knew how to speak up for herself and her fellow prisoners against a system of power, privilege and cruelty that controls the lives of Australia's most vulnerable women and offers little hope for redemption.
282 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 5, 2021
Interesting read about prison life and the path that led to it. Found the blaming of others - mother, system, prison guards - and the repeated projecting onto the guards lacking honesty and self-awareness.
April 3, 2020
This is a story which is raw, brutal and honest. Angela Williams memoir could almost be fictional and you wish that it was.
Angela with university and teaching credentials stepped out to cross a road and was hit by a postie’s motor bike. Police took down her name and a statement and came back two days later with a warrant for her arrest. There was no court case, no bail opportunity, no appeal, just straight to a correctional facility in handcuffs in front of her dismayed partner and young son. Why? She’d served time for a crime she committed when she was a drug addicted teenager, thirteen years earlier. Except she’d only served five months of it. She was taken away to serve the rest.
I’d seen an interview with Angela on the ABC News less than a month or so ago where she talked about her book which had just launched. My curiosity peaked. I had to read it.
Angela pulls no punches. The introduction warns the reader what to expect.
"Let’s take something from the old me and jump in with both feet. Let’s hold our breath when we need to, and laugh when we need to, cry when we need to, eat doughnuts when we need to. I’m here, in the future, holding your hand. I promise it all turns out okay… I drove myself mad to tell you this story, so you damn well better read it."
And once you start reading you can’t stop because no matter how much we see of the old Angela, the prison system, the cruelty of her upbringing and enter her old world, we know it turns out okay. That’s what kept me going. That and the writing, which is wonderful.
"Acrid panic froths across the back of my tongue. A glint of burning light off chrome catches my eye. I lock onto this shred of bright, body frozen in place. Crickets chirp in the bag hanging from my hand."
Learning about the women in the modern-day prison system, how it runs, life as a sex worker and drug addict was astonishing at times to read, yet eye-opening. Her own personal journey gives hope.
"I couldn’t stop myself from questioning power imbalances, was filled with rage at small inequalities and awed into silences by big ones. But I keep trying, trusting, writing, thinking."
I couldn’t help comparing this book to the Mars Room which is fictional and was short listed for the Booker 2018. Snakes and Ladders, I think, is so much better.
Angela with university and teaching credentials stepped out to cross a road and was hit by a postie’s motor bike. Police took down her name and a statement and came back two days later with a warrant for her arrest. There was no court case, no bail opportunity, no appeal, just straight to a correctional facility in handcuffs in front of her dismayed partner and young son. Why? She’d served time for a crime she committed when she was a drug addicted teenager, thirteen years earlier. Except she’d only served five months of it. She was taken away to serve the rest.
I’d seen an interview with Angela on the ABC News less than a month or so ago where she talked about her book which had just launched. My curiosity peaked. I had to read it.
Angela pulls no punches. The introduction warns the reader what to expect.
"Let’s take something from the old me and jump in with both feet. Let’s hold our breath when we need to, and laugh when we need to, cry when we need to, eat doughnuts when we need to. I’m here, in the future, holding your hand. I promise it all turns out okay… I drove myself mad to tell you this story, so you damn well better read it."
And once you start reading you can’t stop because no matter how much we see of the old Angela, the prison system, the cruelty of her upbringing and enter her old world, we know it turns out okay. That’s what kept me going. That and the writing, which is wonderful.
"Acrid panic froths across the back of my tongue. A glint of burning light off chrome catches my eye. I lock onto this shred of bright, body frozen in place. Crickets chirp in the bag hanging from my hand."
Learning about the women in the modern-day prison system, how it runs, life as a sex worker and drug addict was astonishing at times to read, yet eye-opening. Her own personal journey gives hope.
"I couldn’t stop myself from questioning power imbalances, was filled with rage at small inequalities and awed into silences by big ones. But I keep trying, trusting, writing, thinking."
I couldn’t help comparing this book to the Mars Room which is fictional and was short listed for the Booker 2018. Snakes and Ladders, I think, is so much better.
June 11, 2020
SNAKES AND LADDERS BY ANGELA WILLIAMS
It was no surprise that Australian local Angela Williams went to prison. A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. Her life was a a colourful one to say the least - a sex worker with a hefty drug addiction, she still manages to juggle looking after her boy Dex, that she loves so dearly. After serving a short sentence for theft, she works hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela, with two University degrees under her belt, teaching and providing a stable home for her son, she finally feels like she has gained her life back together. Then she gets hit by a postie bike. Police realise that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she thought was in her distant past.
However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a damaged nineteen-year-old, she is now able to speak up for herself and her fellow in mates against a system of power and cruelty in the prison system.
A remarkable story of a remarkable woman that is so beautifully told. Kudos to you Angela.
It was no surprise that Australian local Angela Williams went to prison. A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. Her life was a a colourful one to say the least - a sex worker with a hefty drug addiction, she still manages to juggle looking after her boy Dex, that she loves so dearly. After serving a short sentence for theft, she works hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela, with two University degrees under her belt, teaching and providing a stable home for her son, she finally feels like she has gained her life back together. Then she gets hit by a postie bike. Police realise that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she thought was in her distant past.
However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a damaged nineteen-year-old, she is now able to speak up for herself and her fellow in mates against a system of power and cruelty in the prison system.
A remarkable story of a remarkable woman that is so beautifully told. Kudos to you Angela.
February 29, 2020
I admire Angela Williams’ tenacity both in thriving as a person and mother and in writing of her experiences. This is a challenging read and worthwhile for those who want to understand just how broken our ‘justice’ system can be. Angela brings to life the spirit of many women in prison who are subject to structural and personal injustices.
October 3, 2025
Snakes and Ladders by Angela Williams is a powerful and unflinching memoir that lays bare both the weight of personal trauma and the cruelty of systemic injustice. With raw honesty and flashes of humour, Williams recounts her journey from a violent upbringing to prison, and later, her fight to reclaim dignity, stability, and hope. What makes this memoir stand out is its courage not just in exposing vulnerability, but in confronting the structures that perpetuate inequality and silence the most vulnerable. More than a story of survival, Snakes and Ladders is a testament to resilience, a challenge to society’s blind spots, and an inspiring reminder of the human capacity to rise after every fall.
January 18, 2021
This is the second recent account I've read by an Australian woman of her time in prison. This does an excellent job of presenting the absurdity of the situation, the circumstances that led to her being in prison and how the whole system works. The author has a lot of insight into her own experience and explains it well. Thankfully [spoiler alert], she doesn't spend too much time back in prison, but too long regardless.
April 11, 2020
This book tells you some things what inmates in Australia go through. It seems like once you enter the confines of a prison some people will no longer look at you like you’re a human. Prisons to this day still do not care to treat depression and anxiety. You’re left to deal with it until you walk out free but damaged.
February 1, 2021
I enjoyed this raw and undiluted description of a rather unfortunate life journey. She effectively juxtaposes elements from her unreformed life with more recent events, describing her full and complicated story. She remains both courageous and unapologetic without playing the "victim" when she could so easily have done. A tricky story to tell, but I feel she is bolder for doing so.
December 22, 2023
A raw and brutal look into the brokenness of the correctional system. Angela's second-time-round experiences depict a heartbreaking jaded-ness in a system that demands its pound of flesh. Nevertheless, she keeps going, and you're right there with her when she graduates and finally gets that ankle monitor off. Snakes and Ladders is such an apt title.
March 4, 2020
As someone who has worked in the residential setting with young people, youth detention centres and adult prisons, as people transition, the story from a person who has experienced the life was helpful in ensuring we do our work well and avoid being do-gooders.
A sobering account and read.
A sobering account and read.
October 13, 2024
A good read and reminder of how gross prisons are. I wanted it to go further though like abolition chats. The odd comment here and there didn’t sit 100% right with me. I’m glad author succeeded in getting off H and reuniting with son to break the cycle.
April 8, 2020
An interesting perspective. Kudos to the author for her well written account and achievement.
August 26, 2020
A story told with empathy, humour and passion, and includes some eye-opening accounts of what goes on in women's prisons.
October 11, 2023
An important insight into prisons and the Australian justice system, told in a really accessible way.
July 11, 2022
(2.5 stars)
No stranger to memoirs about trauma, sex work and BDSM, I picked up Snakes and Ladders and found it reasonably engaging. One of the sticking points for me was the writer’s denial of responsibility for her actions by hiving off behaviours into different versions of herself. While this could perhaps be passed off as a writerly way of depicting dissociation, it doesn’t map all that well to dissociative reality: “they might see through my beige skin to the green stain on my soul, smell the Marino hiding under the Williams mask.” It’s my view that the characters—Angela Marino, Mistress Sonya, Sintax, Angela Williams—are the author’s way of trying on different ways of living to make a narrative she can live with. When who you are is down to a series of wardrobe changes, like “referee stripes” it sets up the author as a somewhat untrustworthy narrator.
“I laugh at myself and decide — for possibly the millionth time — that I think way too much for prison.” This book also (from the brusque introduction) demands that you recognise the author’s “Intellectual veracity”. I found this oft repeated refrain — “I’m the wrong kind of brain to put back in the system” — sat at odds with the level of self-reflection in the book. For example, the mock moment of learning watching Tiffany using her sex work stories to shock in the prison setting, supposedly makes the author regret all the times she has done the same. Yet the language of “telling stories of her sex work not to form bonds but to alienate” permeates the whole book: “a former drug-addled sex worker”, “weaned off selling my snatch”, “paid the $1200 tuition upfront with money I’d earned with my vagina”. In addition, certain phrases and ideas, like a “burlesque of authority” are overused and perhaps not as clever as the author thinks they are.
Despite these critiques, for the bulk of society who won’t spend time inside corrective services locations, Snakes and Ladders provides some insights into what these spaces feel like to those housed within them. It also covers off on the indignities of home detention.
No stranger to memoirs about trauma, sex work and BDSM, I picked up Snakes and Ladders and found it reasonably engaging. One of the sticking points for me was the writer’s denial of responsibility for her actions by hiving off behaviours into different versions of herself. While this could perhaps be passed off as a writerly way of depicting dissociation, it doesn’t map all that well to dissociative reality: “they might see through my beige skin to the green stain on my soul, smell the Marino hiding under the Williams mask.” It’s my view that the characters—Angela Marino, Mistress Sonya, Sintax, Angela Williams—are the author’s way of trying on different ways of living to make a narrative she can live with. When who you are is down to a series of wardrobe changes, like “referee stripes” it sets up the author as a somewhat untrustworthy narrator.
“I laugh at myself and decide — for possibly the millionth time — that I think way too much for prison.” This book also (from the brusque introduction) demands that you recognise the author’s “Intellectual veracity”. I found this oft repeated refrain — “I’m the wrong kind of brain to put back in the system” — sat at odds with the level of self-reflection in the book. For example, the mock moment of learning watching Tiffany using her sex work stories to shock in the prison setting, supposedly makes the author regret all the times she has done the same. Yet the language of “telling stories of her sex work not to form bonds but to alienate” permeates the whole book: “a former drug-addled sex worker”, “weaned off selling my snatch”, “paid the $1200 tuition upfront with money I’d earned with my vagina”. In addition, certain phrases and ideas, like a “burlesque of authority” are overused and perhaps not as clever as the author thinks they are.
Despite these critiques, for the bulk of society who won’t spend time inside corrective services locations, Snakes and Ladders provides some insights into what these spaces feel like to those housed within them. It also covers off on the indignities of home detention.
November 27, 2024
Horrifying, but very interesting. A sugar coat free look at life in prison and the realities of drug use, and the absurdity of being re arrested for the same crime so many years later.
May 14, 2020
A great memoir from an Australian woman who manages to get her life together after an abusive childhood and drug addiction. Then she ends up in prison. Its a bit of an Australian Orange is the New Black. A very entertaining read which isn't as depressing as it could be because of Williams' spunk and determination.
April 10, 2020
A great insight into how a person can be devastated by their upbringing and the long term result of abuse.
April 6, 2021
Raw, honest and triumphant.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews