This collection of stories are both tragic and inspiring. These women are remarkable in many ways and further opened my eyes to the broken systems and cycles too many have endured. Their writing is artistic and skilled. Raw,revised, and real. A privilege to read every word and descriptive image created.

I read this for book club. We all agreed it was a good read. All of these women wrote very well. I know they had a professional author coaching and advising them but I don’t think I could achieve what they did even with help. Interesting in that all the women who contributed their stories had several common denominators in their childhood years. One of which was sexual abuse, which all of the women suffered. It makes me wonder - what makes one person turn to crime and another not?

I wasn't sure what to expect, and while these stories are full or hurt and pain, it's not a bleeding train wreck. This is a book full of hope and memories of good times. None of these women's stories are asking for your sympathy or cause you to feel sorry for them. More than anything, this is a book of lessons learned.

This book was excellent. I was hesitant in the beginning because, although it was a "Wally Lamb Book" it wasn't actually written by Wally Lamb. By the end of the book I wished there was a sequel to Couldn't Keep it to Myself so I could continue reading for a long time. The women pour out their souls and expose their most intimate feelings and I felt so fortunate to be reading it. I am connected with these women and because of that I feel the need to write to them in prison and express my gratitude for them voicing their story. I laughed once during the book my eyes welled up numerous times and I felt a sick helpless feeling in my stomach through most of it. Emotionally captivating!
UPDATE: When I wrote this I hadn't even looked to see if there was a second book like this. There is. I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison.... it is on my TO READ list!

I was a bit leery of starting this book when I saw the subject. It took me back to the years I dealt with dysfunctional women and heard stories like the ones related in this volume over and over and over again. After I got into it a ways, though, I couldn't stop reading. More women live in the shadows of the experiences these women had on their way from infancy to womanhood than would commonly be believed. I scratched my head a few years ago when one of the agencies in the state in which I was working reported that there was almost an epidemic of incest in that state. Incest has always lived and moved and had its being in the silent shadows and society, along with emotional and physical abuse. This book brings it out of the shadows and into the light of day. And lest the reader draw comfort in the notion that these are stories of women in a far away prison in a state far away from them, let them be assured that these stories are not stories confined to women in legal confinement. They are the stories of our mothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our kin, and our friends.

Very sad book - my view of imprisoned women has changed. I used to have no compassion for people in prison, considering they must have done something bad enough to get there, but these women's stories show that most of their problems stem from horribly abusive childhoods and if they had a healthier upbringing, most wouldn't be in jail now. Some were raped before they were even old enough to spell the word rape. The book doesn't focus much on their crimes, but their lives before and after their crimes.

Exceptional. I laugh, cried and opened my heart.

I found this collection of essays from incarcerated women compelling. Though I can't condone the paths these women took to lead them to prison, learning the details of their often violent childhoods did make me more compassionate as to their plight. The women's writing skills also impressed me, especially since many of them had an incomplete education. I recommend this book.

I have not read the well-regarded novels by Wally Lamb, but overall, I found this project spear-headed by him to be an interesting read. True, the writing of these women was not the best examples of prose I've ever read, but the naked reality of their stories was refreshing and interesting. This is probably not my first choice of style of reading material, but I'm glad it was recommended to me as it expanded my reading horizons a bit. These women all have compelling stories to tell, and really tough emotions to deal with, and Mr. Lamb's involvement in this endeavor resulted in some thoughtful writing that has no doubt changed these writers' inner lives if not their outer circumstances. Worth the time and effort.

This was a very different book of short stories. Each of the stories was written by a woman prisoner aided by Wally Lamb. It was very interesting how these women ended up in prison with the common denominator being a dysfunctional childhood. It was very well done and Wally Lamb put years of work into it.

As a feminist this book is important. It's voices directly from the women that the prison industrial complex affects. It's a humanizing book that sheds light on a broken criminal justice system. Although it is not implicit that the criminal just system is broken, it is easy to infer from these women's stories that there are systemic issues in these women's lives that prison does still not address. It becomes apparent through these women's words that the way our criminal justice system works now if is a vindictive system. Also illuminated is the fact that the same system that is trying to "teach them a lesson" is partly responsible for failing them in the first place.

And excellent read that further proves that we need to move back to a prison system that emphasizes rehabilitation and not retribution.

"There are things [we] need to know about prison and prisoners. There are misconceptions to be abandoned, biases to be dropped. There are a heart and a mind that need opening. There are many.

We are a paradoxical nation, enormously charitable and stubbornly unforgiving. We have called into existence the prisons we wanted. I am less and less convinced they are the prisons we need."

Excellent read. It humanizes those who need our understanding and compassion the most.