Love lockdown : dating, sex, and marriage in America's prisons /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Greenwood, Elizabeth, 1983- author.
Edition:First Gallery Books hardcover edition.
Imprint:New York : Gallery Books, 2021.
©2021
Description:x, 257 pages ; 24 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12578300
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781501158414
1501158414
9781501158438
Notes:Includes bibliographical references.
Summary:"What is it like to fall in love through the bars of a prison cell? Elizabeth Greenwood spent five years investigating relationships between incarcerated people and their spouses on the outside. She profiled couples whose love through incarceration runs the gamut in terms of sexual orientation, race, and circumstances of their incarceration. A sort of Modern Love: Prison Edition, LOVE LOCKDOWN shows the authentic faces of the husbands and wives supporting some of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States. Greenwood's investigation not only questions our assumptions about relationships through incarceration, but she also opens up under-reported facets of prisons and shines new insights on relationships in general. Greenwood takes the reader inside spaces that many have only heard whispers of-conjugal visit trailers, prison weddings, and more. She sits across a visiting room table from a woman convicted of a double homicide. She sifts through letters and drawings from Richard Ramirez with a former serial killer groupie. She goes to unseen places, teases out the complexities of these relationships, and shines a light on how they reflect desire and delusion we may all experience in our romantic pairings"--
Other form:Online version: Greenwood, Elizabeth, 1983- Love lockdown New York : Gallery Books, [2021] 9781501158438
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Greenwood (Playing Dead) paints a colorful portrait of the world of MWIs, or couples who "met while incarcerated." Contending that "prison relationships are sometimes a bubble of heaven against a backdrop of hell," Greenwood profiles five couples. Jo and Benny Reed, who met on a pen-pal website, got married while Benny was serving a 10-year sentence for attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend. Sherry, a trans woman, and Damon, a bisexual man, last names withheld, communicate through the air vent between their prison cells. Before the Innocence Project helped overturn Fernando Bermudez's wrongful conviction, he and his wife, Crystal, had three children together. Sheila Rule volunteered with her church's prison ministry and married Joe Robinson while she was an editor at the New York Times. Greenwood also shares her own experiences with a prison pen pal who showed her "the laserlike attention that a man with a very long day and little to fill it with can lavish on a lady," profiles organizations that support MWIs, and sketches the history of conjugal visits in the U.S. (only four states still allow them). Enriched by the author's curiosity and empathy, and shot through with memorable details (Jo and Benny "toast each other with blue Powerade from the vending machine"), this is an intriguing look at a little-known world. (July)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Compassionate inquiry into the hidden phenomena of prison relationships, particularly the "MWI" (Met While Incarcerated) demographic. Greenwood was inspired by her own correspondence with a jailed white-collar criminal she met researching her first book, Playing Dead: "Could you find love and vivacity in the ugliest of places? And what are the prisons we erect for ourselves?" She frames these inquiries against the grim reality of this country's incarceration rate (the highest in the world) and its disproportionate effect on poorer individuals and communities of color. At the same time, the author observes that MWI "prison wives" are often middle-class Whites who are drawn to church service groups or prisoner pen-pal websites, a phenomenon that serves as an example of the complex social realities uncovered here. Greenwood opens with the marriage of ex-soldier Jo to Benny, an affable recidivist with a disturbing background of domestic violence, and alternates between the arc of their tumultuous, ultimately successful union and those of several other couples. These include a retired Canadian diplomat who wed and then split from an American woman convicted of murder, a trans woman and a bisexual African American man serving time in the same institution, and a couple who stayed together following the prisoner's wrongful conviction being overturned, who "still came home with all the trauma of anyone who has spent almost half his life in prison." The resilience of MWI spouses is personified throughout by Jo, who observes, "I don't have any problem waiting for him to come home from prison. Because he's my husband." Greenwood makes good use of interviews with prisoners, academics, and others, and the writing is observant, humorous, and even sensuous, as when the author and Jo attend a conference for prisoners' families and hear frank talk about the realities of frustration and conjugal visits. "For once, they are in a place where people understand," writes the author. "They needn't pretend or defend." An empathetic and well-characterized book that will add complexity to debates about mass incarceration. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review


Review by Kirkus Book Review