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Women On the Row: Revelations From Both Sides of the Bars
Book by Kathleen A. O'Shea
156 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2000
16 people want to read
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December 3, 2025updated review (april 1st, 2025): by now i can say with confidence that i am the world’s leading expert on kathleen o’shea, which feels cool. like that’s MY lesbian nun who did terrible things but was also incredibly compassionate and helped hundreds of incarcerated women out of the goodness of her heart. one day i will publish a book about her and i hope everyone will read it and appreciate it. thank you, kathleen o’shea, for everything. i would have loved to meet you.
original review (april 15, 2024):this book gave me such whiplash, and i don't really know how to review it. from an academic standpoint, so interesting. she has a knack for writing ethnographically, and the work she's done to increase awareness and visibility for the women she writes about is so admirable. the parallels between o'shea's life and the lives of the women on death row are striking, so i understand her reasoning for structuring the book the way she did. but i wonder if comparing their suffering on death row to her experience becoming a nun, something completely voluntary, trivializes their pain and undermines their utter lack of choice and control. i'm really not sure – i can see both sides. the second half totally threw me. i don't know anything, but i'm going to write one hell of a paper about this woman, that's for sure
original review (april 15, 2024):this book gave me such whiplash, and i don't really know how to review it. from an academic standpoint, so interesting. she has a knack for writing ethnographically, and the work she's done to increase awareness and visibility for the women she writes about is so admirable. the parallels between o'shea's life and the lives of the women on death row are striking, so i understand her reasoning for structuring the book the way she did. but i wonder if comparing their suffering on death row to her experience becoming a nun, something completely voluntary, trivializes their pain and undermines their utter lack of choice and control. i'm really not sure – i can see both sides. the second half totally threw me. i don't know anything, but i'm going to write one hell of a paper about this woman, that's for sure
Displaying 1 of 1 review