Ann Hansen received a long prison sentence in 1983 for her participation as a member of the the anarchist group known as the “Squamish Five”. This book is a powerful memoir and political tract dealing with her experiences in the Canadian prison system. She makes powerful arguments for change in the prison system often using moving examples of women who were never really given a fair chance in their lives. Thought-provoking and compassionate.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for my honest review.

I don’t support the author’s methods which earnt her a life sentence in the 1980s nor her lack of recognition that her actions would have damaged (physically, mentally and/or financially) a number of the battlers she was trying to help.
But her book on her experiences in the Canadian penal system was fascinating and illuminating. Her story shows a change in her outlook from activist against the capitalist society to adaption within the prison subculture and the survival skills she undertook. She also discusses the injustice and dehumanization of imprisonment, the system that finds a much higher percentage of undereducated, unemployed and/or Indigenous women in prison, whether the crime fits the time set in a sentence and the unfairness in the punishments meted out to women prisoners compared to the infractions that had occurred. There is also a lot of the personnel side of living in prison and of the relationships that form.
She tells her experiences and some of the other women but recognises she had privileges (education and a strong support network) that many do not have. She also explains some of her actions taken during her parole and her on-going role in improving prisoner’s rights and treatment.
It’s a well-written memoir that flows in a simple sequential style covering her three periods of imprisonment and optimistic hopes for a prison-free world. It’s a thought-provoking read of a subject I had not previously thought too much about.