Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

by Susan Burton, Cari Lynn, Michelle Alexander (Foreword by)

Overview

Winner of the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society Awards

Winner of the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Biography/Autobiography)

Winner of the 2017 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice

“Valuable . . . [like Michelle] Alexander's The New Jim Crow.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Susan Burton is a national treasure . . . her life story is testimony to the human capacity for resilience and recovery . . . [Becoming Ms. Burton is] a stunning memoir.”
—Nicholas Kristof, in The New York Times


One woman's remarkable odyssey from tragedy to prison to recovery—and recognition as a leading figure in the national justice reform movement

Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over fifteen years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction. On her own, she eventually found a private drug rehabilitation facility.

Once clean, Susan dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, operates five safe homes in Los Angeles that supply a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and their children—setting them on the track to education and employment rather than returns to prison. Becoming Ms. Burton not only humanizes the deleterious impact of mass incarceration, it also points the way to the kind of structural and policy changes that will offer formerly incarcerated people the possibility of a life of meaning and dignity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620972120
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susan Burton is the founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit that provides sober housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women. Nationally known as an advocate for restoring basic civil and human rights to those who have served time, Burton was a winner of AARP's prestigious Purpose Prize and has been a Starbucks "Upstander," a CNN Top 10 Hero, and a Soros Justice Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles. Cari Lynn is a journalist and the author of five books of nonfiction, including Leg the Spread and The Whistleblower (with Kathryn Bolkovac). Lynn has written for O, The Oprah Magazine; Health; the Chicago Tribune; and Deadline Hollywood. She lives in Los Angeles. Michelle Alexander is the author of the bestselling The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press). She lives in Ohio.

Table of Contents

Foreword Michelle Alexander xi

Prologue xix

Part I Sue

1 Now What? 3

2 Land of Opportunity 8

3 Daddy's Girl 14

4 Hit the Road 19

5 The Sacrifice 26

6 Things You Don't Talk About 34

7 The Life 46

8 From the Skillet to the Frying Pan 54

9 No Justice, No Peace 62

10 A New Drug 69

11 Incarceration Nation 75

12 Collateral Damage 85

13 The Revolving Door 94

14 The Vicious Cycle 99

15 Hurt People 107

16 A Tale of Two Systems 115

17 A Way Out 127

18 Finding Purpose 134

Part II MS. Burton

19 A New Way of Life 143

20 The Wall of No 153

21 Who's Profiting from Our Pain? 159

22 Women and Prison 170

23 A Kindred Spirit 177

24 Taking Food off the Table 181

25 Broke Leg House 185

26 From Trash to Treasure 193

27 All of Us or None 200

28 Treating the Symptoms and the Disease 206

29 The Meaning of Life 216

30 The Women from Orange County 222

31 Being Beholden 226

32 Living an Impossible Life 233

33 The House That Discrimination Built 241

34 Women Organizing for Justice and Opportunity 245

35 What Would Ms. Sybil Brand Think? 255

36 Without Representation 260

37 Prop 47 264

38 The Movement 273

39 The Arc Bends Toward Justice 276

Acknowledgments 283

Further Reading 287

Suggested Resources 289

Notes 291

Editorial Reviews

"Susan’s life story is one our nation desperately needs to hear and understand. This is a story about personal transformation and collective power. It is about one woman’s journey to freedom, and in the process helping to free us all."
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

From the Publisher

04/01/2017
In this memoir, Burton explores her life inside and outside of prison, along with the varied experiences that led her down that path. The author reflects on situations that directly affected her personal and professional life, such as being forced to return to unhealthy relationships upon reentering society because of the difficulty in securing a steady job and housing with a criminal record. She also examines these issues in a broader context; for example, how the lack of employment and housing opportunities increases the odds of a person returning to prison. More importantly, she writes about ways to change these societal issues, including her founding of the Los Angeles-based organization A New Way of Life. Prison reform is an important and timely issue, and stories such as these emphasize the personal aspect of this complex issue while offering statistics for a fuller perspective. VERDICT More than just a memoir, this account provides an intimate glimpse into the problems that plague the U.S. prison system. Also recommended for those interested in prison reform and the race, gender, and socioeconomic issues relating to criminal justice.—Sonnet Ireland, St. Tammany Parish P.L., Mandeville, LA

Library Journal

2017-03-02
How one woman finally broke away from a cycle of imprisonment and went on to help hundreds of other women re-enter normal life.In this engrossing memoir, Burton shares the details of her painful childhood and adolescence: she was sexually molested as a young child, which her mother was aware of but turned a blind eye to; raped at 14, which led to a pregnancy and the birth of her daughter; and worked as a prostitute for money and drugs. But it was the death of her 5-year-old son that threw Burton into a spiral of despair, and she wound up in and out of jail numerous times over the course of 15 years. All those years in jail gave Burton time to question why she continued to use drugs, why she wasn't offered any counseling, like the white prisoners received, and why the judicial system was so biased against black women. When the opportunity arose to make a difference after her final incarceration, Burton embarked on a 20-plus-year campaign to provide the kind of support she knew was missing for women recently released from prison. She successfully executed a complete turnaround of her life, which she chronicles in the second half of this powerful memoir. Burton explains how and why women, especially of color, find themselves at the bottom of the barrel, and given few chances for improvement, and how she has fought to change legislation and the overall handling of prisoners in the state of California. The author speaks a hard but necessary truth, one that should be heard so all prisoners are given a fair chance to re-enter society. Through her strong will and determination, Burton has proven that former prisoners can offer real value to the community and should be given the opportunities to do so. A dramatic, honest, moving narrative of how hard life can get and how one can still overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity to do good in the world.

Kirkus Reviews