A Prison ‘Book Club’ That Is Quietly Changing Everything

BEDFORD HILLS, NY — As a visitor to the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, it’s hard not to try to imagine what led us all to this place — the young girl removing her “Paw Patrol” sneakers before passing through the metal detector; a grandmother negotiating the rules of delivering a care package; and an inmate who lights up with a shy smile when she meets her hero for the first time.

Award-winning author Susan Burton said the stories of nearly all of those women behind bars is one of discrimination, poverty, violence and abuse.

“Hurt people hurt people,” Burton said at an in-person book reading at the women’s facility in northern Westchester County.

Burton knows of what she speaks. She told the female inmates at Bedford Hills and those joining in virtually from correctional facilities across the state, that after two decades cycling in and out of prison, she had a moment that changed everything.

“I woke up and asked myself, ‘when will this end?'” Burton told the inmates and prison staff who were hanging on to her every word. “I said to myself, ‘this isn’t who I am in this life.'”

Since that day, Burton has gone on to use her life experience both out of prison and behind bars to help others who found themselves in what could easily become a spiral of hopelessness.

In addition to being an acclaimed author, Burton is the 2010 recipient of the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2015, The Los Angeles Times named Burton one of the 18 New Civil Rights Leaders in the nation. She was also named a Starbucks Upstander and a CNN Top 10 Hero.

It’s easy to see why the women in Bedford Hills (and those joining in virtually from Albion, Taconic and Westchester County correctional facilities) look up to Burton. She not only experienced circumstances that many of us would not have survived, but she also escaped a cycle of incarceration that rarely lets go of its quarry. And since then, she has gone on to earn (and, in some cases, demand) the respect of elected officials, civil rights leaders and even prison officials who now invite her to speak inside the very institutions which she has battled for most of her life.

One might expect the women in attendance, who read “Becoming Ms. Burton,” to look for guidance on moving beyond their current circumstances, but woman after woman who raised their hands to seek Burton’s advice wanted to know not how to emulate her success, but how they could go about offering a hand to others who find themselves without hope.

In each case, Burton’s advice was direct: the women listening can only help others after they are able to help themselves. Burton explained that the process almost certainly involves letting go of sometimes very justifiable anger.

One woman asked how she could begin a journey from a seemingly insurmountable situation to a place where she too could make a difference in the world.

“I want to give this place in my life some sort of meaning,” she said, with pleading eyes. “But, I don’t know where to start.”

Burton offered an unexpected response.

“I’ll tell you where I started — I started with anger,” Burton told her. “It was a long journey, eventually that anger became love. And I’ll tell you what, I love you. ”

The truth in Burton’s words were immediately evident, as the woman in a fern green prison uniform covered her face to hide her tears from the others in the room. The quiet interaction between two women in a normally clamorous prison laid bare for a fleeting moment all of our culpability in a system that has let us all down in one way or another.

It’s easy to dismiss the tribulations of those in the prison. After all, they have only themselves to blame, many might say. Burton chose a true story of loss and redemption to dispel that notion as the prologue to her book, “Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women.”

It was from this prologue that she chose to begin her reading.

“Ingrid was 34 years old when her life had changed in a single day, outside a Dollar General Store,” Burton read as all eyes were glued to her, and the silence became absolute. “Having scrounged the money to buy Pampers and baby formula, she took her screaming toddler with her and made a bottle in the checkout line, but left her sleeping baby in the car, the windows open for air. Not 10 minutes later, when she returned to her car the police were there.”

Ingrid would be arrested for child endangerment, sentenced to three years in prison and lose custody of all three of her daughters.

As Burton read on, it became clear she, sadly, saw nothing unusual about this story of incarceration.

“I was silent while she blamed everything on herself, how she’d been frazzled and sleep-deprived, and, looking back, perhaps had postpartum depression,” Burton continued. “Okay, I thought, but had Ingrid been a person of means, had she been in a different neighborhood, had she not been Black, would she have been sentenced to years in prison? Or would she have been given help, sent to parenting classes and therapy — resources that existed for certain people, but not for others?”

In the prison’s parole board room, just yards from where Burton read the excerpts from her book, taking responsibility for the actions that resulted in a prisoner’s incarceration is the bare minimum required for early release. However, Burton told those listening that understanding the stacked deck that led to finding themselves facing a lifetime of trying to escape the revolving door of mass incarceration is key to building a life outside the prison walls.

That isn’t to say that Burton doesn’t believe in personal responsibility. She said she caused hurt in response to her own hurt, which included unspeakable abuse that started early on in her life. Burton, who is 26 years sober, said that the step of making amends as part of her recovery proved a challenge because of justifiable concerns about her returning to some of the dark places in her life. Her sponsor suggested that continuing her work as an advocate for other women would be a far more effective way of making amends — a decision she said every woman listening would need to make for themselves.

Burton’s work goes far beyond offering inspiration to women trying to break free of a cycle of incarceration — she offers direct help as well. She is the founder of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit organization that provides housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women.

Less than an hour from Bedford Hills, an unassuming house in a quiet Mount Vernon neighborhood is just the latest example of Burton’s efforts. The Lilac House celebrated its grand opening two days earlier.

The Westchester city’s first Sisterhood Alliance for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) home will welcome up to seven women returning to the Mount Vernon community following their incarceration.

“This home will not only offer formerly incarcerated women a bed, but also an opportunity to reconstruct their lives, reunite with their families, and shatter the cycle of recidivism,” Pamela Zimba, founder of Lilac House, who shared the stage with Burton explained. “These women face immense challenges, and without a safe and supportive environment, they are at higher risk of returning to prison.”

Lilac House is a member of the SAFE Housing Network, an international collective of 31 organizations dedicated to offering reentry services to formerly incarcerated women. The SAFE Housing Network is working to decarcerate the US by bringing people home to stay, helping them to heal from the trauma of incarceration, and empowering them to lead in the fight to end mass incarceration. Since opening its first homes in 2019, the SAFE Housing Network (including A New Way of Life) has housed more than 700 formerly incarcerated people. The network has also provided other reentry services to another nearly 12,000 formerly incarcerated people since 2019.

“Supporting people as they return to our community is critical to reducing recidivism, victimization, and the extraordinary amount we spend on the archaic approach that we call our system of justice,” Burton said at the grand opening. “Lilac House is doing critical work to ensure these beautiful women have the resources and stability they need to thrive. We are grateful for their partnership and commitment to making enormous change for these individuals.”

Zimba, who is herself a former inmate, said that at first she tried to rent space to open the Lilac House, but as soon as landlords found out what she wanted to use the house for, she was met with closed doors. In the end, Burton helped Zimba find the money to buy a property to start Lilac House — not bad for a woman who confessed she only had $200 gate money to her name the last time she was released from prison.

The Lilac House and other SAFE Housing homes, including A New Way of Life and Dreamed Differed in Brooklyn, have an application process for women hoping to move in, but Burton explains that the number of criteria is a motivation to do whatever it takes to build a better life.

Conventional wisdom and the way the correctional system is designed certainly make it seem like going along to get get along would be the best way to survive a prison sentence and, in many ways, that is probably true, but Burton lights up and leans forward in her seat when she heard from the inmates who were determined not to let anyone or anything stand between them and their dreams. The inmate at Taconic Correctional Facility who was months away from her first parole hearing on a possible life sentence, but still planned to not only graduate law school, but use that law degree to challenge the very idea of mass incarceration; the wheelchair-bound inmate in the special housing facility at Bedford Hills, who chided Burton for not more fully considering disabled women; and the 76-year-old who took the opportunity to confront Acting New York Commissioner of Corrections Daniel F. Martuscello III about the news that she wouldn’t be released as expected because no housing was currently available for someone who required the use of a walker.

“This is what we want to see,” Burton gushed, smiling. “Sometimes you just need to not take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Burton lives the philosophy she preaches. In addition to fighting to help formerly incarcerated women find a better life, she is a tireless fighter of the system itself. Her battles go beyond just prison reform. She has a global reputation as an advocate for restoring basic civil and human rights to those who have served time. She has led efforts to restore inmates’ rights to vote, and bar discrimination in housing and employment for those who have served time.

Burton told the women, gathered across the state in prison classrooms and common spaces, that there is much more to be done, but she promised to keep fighting and asked them to do the same and reminded them once again that sometimes you just can’t take “no” for an answer.

“In some states, I couldn’t be sitting here — there are still places that don’t let the formerly incarcerated visit prisons,” Burton said, later adding, “they won’t give me ‘Global Entry’ [at airport customs], so, I just say, ‘okay then, give me a wheelchair.'”

Walking through the prison campus at Bedford Hills, it’s easy to erase the razor wire and guard tower from your thoughts and turn your attention to the rolling hills, the oak tree that predates the prison wall, women laughing outside the commissary or the inmates patiently helping to raise and train service dogs. The indignity of the place is undeniable, however, even for those who are just visiting. The searches, the prison bars, the quiet suspicion, and the mechanical locking of doors in front and behind linger long after exiting the prison gates.

There are thousands of stories in prisons across New York, but thanks to the indomitable Susan Burton, there is more reason than ever to believe at least some of those stories will end with a real change for both those inside and outside the walls.