The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner
A couple of years ago, I would have been pretty unlikely to pick up a novel about an incarcerated woman. But having read The New Jim Crow and developing an interest in our broken criminal justice system, and knowing Rachel Kushner to be a skillful and intelligent writer, I couldn't let this one gather dust on my bookshelf. This book is brutal and demoralizing, much like prison in the United States, and illustrative of so many of the lost lives caught up in the system.
Romy Hall is serving two consecutive life sentences for murdering a man. Behind her - a young son being cared for by his grandmother, an artist boyfriend, and a job at the Mars Room, the sleaziest strip join in San Francisco. Before her - a lifetime in prison, where violence is rote, guards see their charges as less than human, and the other inmates can just as easily be a source of fear as friendship. Romy, like many of the women around her, started her life with the deck stacked against her. Born into poverty to an absent father and indifferent mother, Romy got into drugs and sex early. She graduated high school, which makes her one of the most educated women in the prison, but a life of bad choices and few options left her to make her money stripping. The stories around her are similar: abusive families, gang violence, stupid teenage decisions, the color of their skin; all these things conspire to make these women's lives incredibly difficult. One of the guards says, when Romy tries to learn about her son's situation, that she doesn't get to be a mother, because if she wanted to be one, she wouldn't have made the choices she did that made her wind up here. This, of course, isn't fair, and isn't true.
It's difficult to read about these characters, because even though this is fiction, we know that prison is filled with women like these. Our society puts tremendous value on bettering yourself, but refuses to provide people with the tools they require to do so. Prison is a punishment, yes, but it's also supposed to rehabilitate, which is a joke. Recidivism rates are sky high in the U.S. Women like Romy and those she's close to are given no opportunity to engage in the kind of social mobility idolized in the American Dream. And when they are at their lowest, instead of working to pick them up, our prison system does all it can to make them feel even more worthless. This is a heartbreaking work that shows us just how broken the system is, and how being born poor in America is practically a death sentence. As difficult a book as it is to read, I'm sure it was difficult to write, and Kushner does an amazing job with this topic.
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Romy Hall is serving two consecutive life sentences for murdering a man. Behind her - a young son being cared for by his grandmother, an artist boyfriend, and a job at the Mars Room, the sleaziest strip join in San Francisco. Before her - a lifetime in prison, where violence is rote, guards see their charges as less than human, and the other inmates can just as easily be a source of fear as friendship. Romy, like many of the women around her, started her life with the deck stacked against her. Born into poverty to an absent father and indifferent mother, Romy got into drugs and sex early. She graduated high school, which makes her one of the most educated women in the prison, but a life of bad choices and few options left her to make her money stripping. The stories around her are similar: abusive families, gang violence, stupid teenage decisions, the color of their skin; all these things conspire to make these women's lives incredibly difficult. One of the guards says, when Romy tries to learn about her son's situation, that she doesn't get to be a mother, because if she wanted to be one, she wouldn't have made the choices she did that made her wind up here. This, of course, isn't fair, and isn't true.
It's difficult to read about these characters, because even though this is fiction, we know that prison is filled with women like these. Our society puts tremendous value on bettering yourself, but refuses to provide people with the tools they require to do so. Prison is a punishment, yes, but it's also supposed to rehabilitate, which is a joke. Recidivism rates are sky high in the U.S. Women like Romy and those she's close to are given no opportunity to engage in the kind of social mobility idolized in the American Dream. And when they are at their lowest, instead of working to pick them up, our prison system does all it can to make them feel even more worthless. This is a heartbreaking work that shows us just how broken the system is, and how being born poor in America is practically a death sentence. As difficult a book as it is to read, I'm sure it was difficult to write, and Kushner does an amazing job with this topic.
Shop local!
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