Women Doing Life: Gender, Punishment and the Struggle for Identity

The carceral experiences of women serving life sentences.

2017 Michigan Notable Book Selection presented by The Detroit Free Press

How do women – mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces and grandmothers – make sense of judgment to a lifetime behind bars? In Women Doing Life, Lora Bex Lempert presents a typology of the ways that life-sentenced women grow and self-actualize, resist prison definitions, reflect on and “own” their criminal acts, and ultimately create meaningful lives behind prison wall...