I felt compelled to blow the whistle on the penal system, under the delusion that doing so might result in some change, or at least save a few women from the same fate. Eternally naïve, that's me.

The only thing I remember writing in prison is a couple of poems for an inmate magazine they did once a year.

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

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.

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.

I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off and on the street until my mid-twenties.

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.