Five Stories of Dating, Sex, and Marriage in America's Prisons
March 29, 2021
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.
May 21, 2021
Unlike prison romance fiction or florid memoirs such as Jodie Sinclair's Love Behind Bars, Greenwood's book is an empathetic, detached portrait of five prison couples. They include a veteran with PTSD who married a person convicted of attempted murder, an incarcerated trans woman in love with a bisexual fellow inmate, and a New York Times editor who married a man convicted of murder. The overarching themes of the book are pain and the need for connection. Each of the incarcerated people portrayed, as well as their mates, has experienced serious trauma. In attempting to paint a portrait of each couple and their circumstances, Greenwood interviewed both partners in the relationships, but didn't interview others in their lives, like ex-spouses or children. In the process of reporting the book, Greenwood witnessed relationship struggles, visited support groups, and connected with academics studying the sociological effects on relationships when one or more family members is incarcerated. The book does an admirable job of showing that hope, like love, is a choice these partners make. VERDICT This work by Greenwood (Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud) offers an engaging, informative, open-minded account of family dynamics that are often overlooked.--Harry Charles, St. Louis
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 1, 2021
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.
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