My friends in prison were mostly women more like myself: not historical figures who I did not relate to as peers, but hookers and addicts.

People think I'm educated because I talk and write well, but the fact is I never finished high school. I've read a lot, is all.

The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in a certain kind of drag.

I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever.

I was already a wreck when I went in, and prison nearly destroyed what little was left of me. I was worse when I came out than I was when I went in, and was not positively changed in any way.

Although I was simply what today would be called a "mule" - the bottom of the food chain in the drug biz - the federal system treated me from beginning to end like a major criminal, and I still don't know why, other than that in those days, 6.5 ounces of heroin was a big load. Ludicrous by today's standards, when coke, heroin, and weed are shipped across the border by the ton.

I had a naïve idea that if I could tell the story, people would be outraged and do something about conditions in the jails.