Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Becoming Ms. Burton
WORK NOTES: with Susan Burton
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.carilynn.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://thenewpress.com/books/becoming-ms-burton * http://thenewpress.com/authors/cari-lynn * https://www.carilynn.net/bio
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
University of Maryland, B.A.; Johns Hopkins University, M.A.; University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, fellowship in business journalism.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Taught at Loyola University, Chicago, IL.
WRITINGS
Also author of of self-published nonfiction books; editor of two celebrity books. Contributor to periodicals, including the Chicago Tribune, Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Health, Good Housekeeping, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Contributor to websites, including Huffington Post, Deadline Hollywood, Hollywood Dementia, and Awardsline.
The Whistleblower was adapted for film, Voltage Pictures, 2010.
SIDELIGHTS
Cari Lynn is a journalist and author of both nonfiction and fiction books. In addition to credited books, she has coedited two celebrity books. Lynn spent many years working in Chicago, Illinois, before moving to Los Angeles, California.
Leg the Spread
In her book Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys’ Club of Commodities Trading, Lynn draws from two years spend undercover as a clerk in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to detail the the largely male world of commodities trading and the women who try to make make it there. Lynn examines the futures market and the intestinal fortitude needed to do this type of trading. While on the surface it would appear to make no difference whether the trader is a man or a woman, Lynn writes that it is much more difficult for a woman to get ahead in what the author sees as a frenzied world where the major objective is to make lots of money.
According to Lynn, the raucous world of each trading session features fights, gambling, and even illicit sex. Describing the women who enter this world, Lynn notes that they have to develop a tough persona, ignoring swearing, sexist comments, and various efforts at intimidation. Lynn writes that very few women have been successful in this career but profiles some who have established themselves in the typically all-boys club. She also describes her own experiences at the exchange. “Lynn performs valiantly, but the pleasure here is not in watching her grow as a trader but learning the ins and outs and occult jargon of the trading floor,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Susan C. Awe, writing in Library Journal, called Leg the Spread “definitely enlightening.”
The Whistleblower
Lynn is coauthor with Kathryn Bolkovac of The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice. The book tells the story of Bolkovac’s harrowing experiences as a human rights investigator in the Balkans and the dangers she faced as she investigated the truth about human trafficking and the company that hired her. A divorced mother of three, Bolkovac was a police officer in Nebraska when she saw that DynCorp International, a private military contractor, was hiring for a position. Bolkovac saw the job as an opportunity to earn more money while traveling the world and helping to rebuild a country devastated by war. Bolkovac was hired and sent to work in Bosnia in 1998.
DynCorp, America’s largest military contractor at the time, had landed a contract to help support the United Nations’ peacekeeping efforts as part of an international Police Task Force in Bosnia. Bolkovac was made a human rights investigator and head of the company’s gender affairs unit. Bolkovac, however, was already somewhat anxious, noting that she had not received proper training for the assignment. After landing in Sarajevo and beginning her work, she soon began to learn about various officers involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution. Furthermore, these officers had strong connections with various mercenary contractors, the United Nations, and the U.S. State Department.
When Bolkovac became vocal about what her investigations had uncovered, she soon found herself demoted and eventually was fired. Bolkovac still had the documentation of what she had learned. Fearing for her life, she fled Bosnia and eventually won a lawsuit against DynCorp while exposing its role in these illegal activities. In addition to recounting Bolkovac’s story, Bolkovac and Lynn discuss the downside of hiring military contractors to handle what they believe should be government responsibilities.
“Beyond the personal story of heroine Kathy Bolkovac and the horrors of how she was treated for simply doing her job, as well as anger about the plight of defenseless women caught up in immoral exploitation, this book is an eye-opener about the inner workings of a highly profitable industry … revealing it to be a hotbed of the worst kind of intrigue, politics and abuse,” wrote CSRwire website contributor Elaine Cohen. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that The Whistleblower “bristles with disturbing details and heartfelt compassion.”
Madam
Lynn’s debut novel, Madam: A Novel of New Orleans, was written with Kellie Martin. Based on a true story, the novel tells the tale of a lowly prostitute who rises up to become a high-class madam. Mary Deubler is barely making a living as a prostitute in New Orleans in 1900. Then a city alderman named Sidney Story forces through the creation of a high-class red-light district that comes to be known as “Storyville.” The novel follows Mary as she overcomes her belief that she has no place in the high-class bordellos and eventually transforms herself in the powerful Madame Josie Arlington.
“Madam is a fascinating account of New Orleans’ unsavory history and is recommended for lovers of New Orleans and general historical fiction readers,” wrote a contributor to the Historical Novel Society website. Jennifer Tatum, writing for the San Francisco Book Review website, commented: “You can almost smell the dank alleyways and hear the shouting of the newsies on the rough streets.”
Becoming Ms. Burton
Lynn collaborated with Susan Burton to write Burton’s memoir Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. The memoir follows Burton from her childhood on through multiple incarcerations until Burton finally breaks a cycle of misdeeds that ended up with her serving multiple prison sentences. Readers learn that Burton was sexually molested as a young child and raped at the age of fourteen, after which she became pregnant. She ended up working as a prostitute.
Eventually, Burton fell into even deeper despair when one of her children, a five-year-old boy, died when he was hit by a car in Los Angeles. In the aftermath of his death, Burton began taking more and more drugs to ease the pain and ended up in and out of jail over a fifteen-year period. In detailing Burton’s prison life, Burton and Lynn recount how Burton began to realize that she was being discriminated against in prison. Whereas white female prisoners often received drug counseling, Burton was never given that opportunity. The authors also address the legal system’s overall poor treatment of black women. The book goes on to detail how Burton turned her life around and spent two decades on a campaign to help support women after their release from prison.
“By telling her story, she continues to advocate for a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity,” wrote Valerie Hawkins in a review for Booklist. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Becoming Ms. Burton “a dramatic, honest, moving narrative of how hard life can get and how one can still overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity to do good in the world.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Lynn, Cari, and Susan Burton, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, New Press (New York, NY), 2017.
Lynn, Cari, Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys’ Club of Commodities Trading, Broadway Books (New York, NY), 2004.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 2004, Mary Whaley, review of Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading, p. 186; April 15, 2017, Valerie Hawkins, review of Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, p. 2.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2010, review of The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice; July 15, 2004, review of Leg the Spread, p. 674; March 15, 2017, review of Becoming Ms. Burton.
Library Journal, August, 2004, Susan C. Awe, review of Leg the Spread, p. 91.
Publishers Weekly, July 12, 2004, review of Leg the Spread, p. 52; November 22, 2010, review of The Whistleblower, p. 52; March 13, 2017, review of Becoming Ms. Burton, p. 71.
ONLINE
Cari Lynn Website, https://www.carilynn.net/ (November 6, 2017).
CSRwire, http://www.csrwire.com (May 31, 2011), Elaine Cohen, review of The Whistleblower.
Historical Novel Society, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ (November 6, 2017), review of Madam: A Novel of New Orleans.
Hope for the Sold, http://hopeforthesold.com/ (Mar 16, 2011), Michelle Brock, review of The Whistleblower.
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (June 21, 2017), Elaine Elilnson, “An Arduous but Triumphant Journey,” review of Becoming Ms. Burton.
Nation Online, https://www.thenation.com/ (May 11, 2017), Michelle Alexander, review of Becoming Ms. Burton.
San Francisco Book Review, https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ (November 6, 2017), Jennifer Tatum, review of Madam.*
Cari Lynn is a journalist and has written several books of nonfiction, including BECOMING MS. BURTON with Susan Burton, which has been featured on THE DAILY SHOW, NPR's FRESH AIR, and was called "stunning" in The New York Times; THE WHISTLEBLOWER with Kathryn Bolkovac; and LEG THE SPREAD, which was featured everywhere from O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE to the ECONOMIST. Cari forayed into fiction with the historical novel, MADAM, set in 1800s New Orleans. She's written feature articles for numerous publications and has taught both college and graduate students. She holds an M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland. A longtime Chicagoan, she currently lives in Los Angeles. www.CariLynn.net
Cari Lynn is a journalist and the author of four books of nonfiction, including The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice with Kathryn Bolkovac, and Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boy’s Club of Commodities Trading. Cari has written for numerous publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine, Health, The Chicago Tribune, and Deadline Hollywood. She has taught at Loyola University and received an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Los Angeles. This is her first novel.
Cari Lynn is a journalist and the author of five books of nonfiction, including Becoming Ms. Burton with Susan Burton (The New Press), Leg the Spread, and The Whistleblower with Kathryn Bolkovac. Lynn has written for O, The Oprah Magazine; Health; the Chicago Tribune; and Deadline Hollywood. She lives in Los Angeles.
Cari Lynn is a journalist and author of both nonfiction and fiction.
She is the co-author of Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (The New Press, 2017) about the life of social justice crusader Susan Burton. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof calls the book "stunning" and deems Susan Burton "a national treasure."
Cari's fiction debut, Madam: A Novel of New Orleans (Penguin/Plume, 2014), is based on the true story of New Orleans's experiment with legalized prostitution in the late 1800s.
Previously, Cari wrote Kathryn Bolkovac's memoir, The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice (Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press, 2011), the true story of a police officer who blew the whistle on a human trafficking ring. The Whistleblower received international attention and press, and was presented at the United Nations and The Hague, as well as Cornell, Columbia, Loyola Law School, Brandeis, Vanderbilt, and Brown universities. The Whistleblower major motion picture starring Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave premiered in 2011.
Cari wrote the nonfiction book Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar World of Commodities Trading (Broadway Books/Doubleday, 2004) after spending two years undercover in the vicious, open-outcry trading pits of Chicago. Receiving a Starred Kirkus review, the book was featured in numerous publications, from The Economist to O, The Oprah Magazine. It was named Readers' Choice by Elle magazine. Cari was featured on CNN, PBS and NPR, and FOX optioned Leg the Spread for TV/film adaptation.
Other books include co-writing the story of a doctor who rescued orphans from third-world countries, and the story of a real-life Dr. Doolittle. Cari has also edited two celebrity books.
Her credits include features for numerous magazines and newspapers, such as O:The Oprah Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Health, Good Housekeeping, The Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, and England’s The Guardian, Deadline Hollywood, and Awardsline and the Hollywood Reporter. Her short fiction has appeared in Nikki Finke's Hollywood Dementia.
Cari received an M.A. in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland. She completed a fellowship in Business Journalism at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. A long-time Chicagoan, she now lives in Los Angeles.
Burton, Susan: BECOMING MS. BURTON
(Mar. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Burton, Susan BECOMING MS. BURTON New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $25.95 5, 9 ISBN: 978-1-62097-212-0
How one woman finally broke away from a cycle of imprisonment and went on to help hundreds of other women re-enter normal life.In this engrossing memoir, Burton shares the details of her painful childhood and adolescence: she was sexually molested as a young child, which her mother was aware of but turned a blind eye to; raped at 14, which led to a pregnancy and the birth of her daughter; and worked as a prostitute for money and drugs. But it was the death of her 5-year-old son that threw Burton into a spiral of despair, and she wound up in and out of jail numerous times over the course of 15 years. All those years in jail gave Burton time to question why she continued to use drugs, why she wasn't offered any counseling, like the white prisoners received, and why the judicial system was so biased against black women. When the opportunity arose to make a difference after her final incarceration, Burton embarked on a 20-plus-year campaign to provide the kind of support she knew was missing for women recently released from prison. She successfully executed a complete turnaround of her life, which she chronicles in the second half of this powerful memoir. Burton explains how and why women, especially of color, find themselves at the bottom of the barrel, and given few chances for improvement, and how she has fought to change legislation and the overall handling of prisoners in the state of California. The author speaks a hard but necessary truth, one that should be heard so all prisoners are given a fair chance to re-enter society. Through her strong will and determination, Burton has proven that former prisoners can offer real value to the community and should be given the opportunities to do so. A dramatic, honest, moving narrative of how hard life can get and how one can still overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity to do good in the world.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Burton, Susan: BECOMING MS. BURTON." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485105186&it=r&asid=8a5d52231a3f43b62c713f898a441531. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105186
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women
Valerie Hawkins
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p2.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. By Susan Burton and Cari Lynn. May 2017. 336p. New Press, $25.95 (97816209721201. 365.6.
Burton, along with journalist and writer Lynn, presents an unflinching account of Burton's life, told in two parts. First, Burton recounts her early years, revealing a girls life not interrupted but derailed by sexual abuse and emotional neglect. The damage done was made worse later, when her five-year-old son was struck by a car and killed in Los Angeles. Burton self-medicated to treat her pain, became addicted to drugs, and ended up in prison several times, facing seemingly impossible obstacles each time she was released. In the second half of the book, Burton shares her step-by-step path to not only getting herself back on her feet but also to founding the standout nonprofit organization, A New Way of Life Reentry Project, to help other women burdened with a criminal record. Burton has received a Top 10 CNN Hero award and a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, and the Los Angeles Times named Burton one of the nations New Civil Rights Leaders. Burton has helped thousands of formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals, and now, by telling her story, she continues to advocate for a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity. --Valerie Hawkins
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hawkins, Valerie. "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 2. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536031&it=r&asid=82365236a3ea0999fec23d8f12e3f143. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536031
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women
264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p71.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women
Susan Burton and Cari Lynn. New Press, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-62097-213-7
Burton founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit organization that supports formerly incarcerated women, joins coauthor Lynn (Leg the Spread) to write a compelling memoir about her own journey into social justice activism after multiple imprisonments. A survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault during her childhood, Burton turned to cocaine and crack after her five-year-old son was killed in a hit-and-run incident. Once caught up in California's prison system, she spent nearly two decades incarcerated or on parole before she was able to break the cycle by fighting for the drug treatment and trauma therapy she needed. The latter half of the book documents Burton's tireless efforts to effect change--first helping individual women, released from prison with few resources, to make a new start, and then snowballing advocacy efforts at the state and national level to reshape how the United States treats those with criminal records. Too often, national debates about mass incarceration take place in the abstract world of economics or social science data; rarely do individuals who have been or are currently incarcerated have a place at the policy table. This first-person account of the trauma that incarceration inflicts on individuals and families ties those policy discussions to lived reality. It may also help the incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated, and their families know that they are not alone. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 71+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971671&it=r&asid=14d15059ee92a30ca077fe871c7c8738. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485971671
The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice
257.46 (Nov. 22, 2010): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice
Kathryn Bolkovac with Cari Lynn. Palgrave Macmillan, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-0-230-10802-8
Bolkovac, a former Nebraska police officer with a specialty in forensic science, was hoping to affect change in war-devastated Bosnia when she signed on as an international police monitor at the peak of the Balkan conflict. While in Sarajevo, the divorced mother of three collected evidence, victim statements concerning the horrific situations, brutal rapes, and murders of innocent women and children she encountered. But as an employee for DynCorp, a leading military contractor in world security, she seldom saw justice done. After being promoted by the U.N. to oversee cases of domestic abuses, sexual assault, and human trafficking, Bolkovac uncovers a vast network of women and underage girls sold to brothels near military bases, with a client list of soldiers, police, and officials. When she implicates the U.N. in Bosnia for covering up for its officials selling women in prostitution, she is fired--allegedly for falsifying a time sheet, but the damage is done and her evidence is presented at a tribunal. Overall, Bolkovac's story, with the help of journalist Lynn, bristles with disturbing details and heartfelt compassion. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice." Publishers Weekly, 22 Nov. 2010, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA242958145&it=r&asid=ecc0f279f87607bbc35bbe8e2d2d967d. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A242958145
Bolkovac, Kathryn: THE WHISTLEBLOWER
(Nov. 1, 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Bolkovac, Kathryn THE WHISTLEBLOWER Palgrave Macmillan (Adult Nonfiction) $25.00 1, 4 ISBN: 978-0-230-10802-8
An American policewoman uncovers evil in the aftermath of the Bosnian war and is punished for her efforts.
Bolkovac, a veteran of the Lincoln, Neb., police force, was looking for a new challenge, a higher salary and a chance to escape from a bitter divorce. So she signed up with private security company DynCorp to join the peace-keeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina after a decade of ethnic violence and civil war. DynCorp was contracted by the U.S. government to put together an American contingent of hired guns to complement the U.N.-directed forces of active police officers lent by other countries with a mandate to bring back order to a lawless land. However, Bolkovac soon discovered that DynCorp officials, when not involved in lawlessness themselves, were intent on covering up their employees' patronage of a human-trafficking operation that had taken root in Bosnia. Eastern European girls as young as 12 were lured to the former Yugoslavia for work. Once there, their passports were confiscated, they were plied with heroin and indentured as sex workers with no country. As Bolkovac attempted to educate the local police forces about the criminality of sex slavery and violence against women, she found that her American colleagues-especially her superiors-were often as uneducable as the locals. Indeed, her attempt to shame the Americans via an e-mail explaining the difference between an underage sex slave and a willing prostitute earned her the thanks usually afforded a whistleblower-she was fired on a minor technicality. Though much of the action involves bureaucratic infighting, Bolkovac and co-author Lynn (Leg the Spread: A Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys' Club of Commodities Trading, 2004, etc.) successfully evoke the paranoid atmosphere of a suspense film; in fact, the film version, starring Rachel Weisz, is set for release in 2010. By spotlighting Bolkovac's travails, the narrative loses some focus on the plight of trafficked girls and the crimes still being perpetrated by private contractors operating on behalf of the U.S. government in war zones around the world. However, the authors shine a light on a neglected area of widespread human suffering.
Along with the film adaptation, this book will hopefully draw attention to an underreported tragedy.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bolkovac, Kathryn: THE WHISTLEBLOWER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2010. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA256562356&it=r&asid=8b28261f8b22579747f2635858b3828f. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A256562356
Lynn, Cari. Leg the Spread: A Woman's Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading
Mary Whaley
101.2 (Sept. 15, 2004): p186.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Lynn, Cari. Leg the Spread: A Woman's Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading. Sept. 2004. 320p. Broadway, $24.95 (0-7679-0855-4). 332.64.
Lynn, a writer and a clerk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the Merc), tells stories about the famous trading floor and the few women who flourish in that environment of bad behavior, extraordinary skill and instincts, breathtaking greed, and heroic courage. Futures trading focuses on taking risks, with unlimited potential for profit and staggering loss by debt-strapped players. Trading is a one-dimensional job in which money is put ahead of creative, intellectual, or emotional satisfaction, and nothing matters other than proving yourself in competition to make more money. Women learn to ignore foul language and cease to be intimidated by it, learn to ignore sexist comments and suggestions, and a few are very successful. The author tells us that futures trading is a secret-handshake society, which continues to be a testosterone-saturated world where there is no room for boys much less women. The winner is the one who dies with the most toys, and "winning" is what this business is all about.
Whaley, Mary
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Whaley, Mary. "Lynn, Cari. Leg the Spread: A Woman's Adventures inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2004, p. 186. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA122702583&it=r&asid=d2da3b09c1db5e0aafcdeacf569ed00e. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A122702583
Lynn, Cari. Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boy's Club of Commodities Trading
Susan C. Awe
129.13 (Aug. 2004): p91.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
LYNN, CARI. Leg the Spread: A Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boy's Club of Commodities Trading. Broadway. Sept. 2004. c.320p. ISBN 0-7679-0855-4. $24.95. BUS
"Leg the spread" is a trading term for safeguarding your position, and Lynn here presents the stories of women who have done just that while making it in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a.k.a. the Mere. Lynn, who worked as a clerk on the Mere for over two years, starts with a story from October 19, 1987--Black Monday, when a trillion dollars evaporated in the single largest stock market drop in history. In absorbing her description of an environment dominated by yelling, bullying, and mayhem, readers get to know retired trader Ricki, bottom feeder Alexis, and Bev, backbone of the Merc. These and other savvy women outwit and outearn the men in the ultimate boy's club. Readers will not only enjoy this entertaining and well-written book but also will learn about the riskiest form of trading. What would yon do if you got a margin call to pay up $1 million? Not a necessary purchase but definitely enlightening.--Susan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Albuquerque
Awe, Susan C.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Awe, Susan C. "Lynn, Cari. Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boy's Club of Commodities Trading." Library Journal, Aug. 2004, p. 91. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA121503603&it=r&asid=c8d8d5062a8a1ac0b35366c468359a70. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A121503603
Lynn, Cari: Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading
72.14 (July 15, 2004): p674.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Lynn, Cari LEG THE SPREAD: A Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading Broadway (320 pp.) $24.95 Oct. 5, 2004 ISBN: 0-7679-0855-4
A young journalist breaks into the mostly male world of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and learns a life lesson: "It always surprises me how greedy I really am."
So, it seems, are the blazer-clad players on the floor of the Merc, where antacids are mother's milk and stress-induced heart attacks are as common as colds. The floor is the province of men, even if women traders are not so rare as they once were; says one of the veterans, "being a woman, you really are alone and independent here. If you have no one to talk to, it's this very, very heavy load to be carrying around." Not discouraged, Lynn buys her seat on the exchange--a transaction, we learn, that is fraught with all kinds of hidden financial perils when markets turn south, which is often. She fearlessly sets to work, discovering along the way that tenacity counts more than smarts and that it's dangerous to analyze things too closely in the world of business, where the herd instinct runs strong: first impulse, best impulse. One mentor tells her, in this regard, "The one thing you can count on at the Merc ... is that there is always someone more stupid than you." Lynn performs valiantly, but the pleasure here is not in watching her grow as a trader but learning the ins and outs and occult jargon of the trading floor: the secret sign language of the "arb," for instance--"If Paine Webber has just dropped a large order, you start rubbing your neck, like a pain.... If I start scratching my nose before the order, it means do the opposite--so if I'm saying buy, I really mean sell)--and the complexities of covering a bet by working both sides of the transaction, the "legging the spread" of the title.
A Plimptonesque revel, and one of the most entertaining business books to come around in a long while. (Agent: Dan Mandel/Sanford J. Greenburger Associates)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lynn, Cari: Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2004, p. 674. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA119849380&it=r&asid=7d6b1d3724cdf76a9e954586cc1a49a3. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A119849380
Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys' Club of Commodities Trading
251.28 (July 12, 2004): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
LEG THE SPREAD: A Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys' Club of Commodities Trading CARI LYNN. Broadway, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-7679-0855-4
In this insightful volume, Lynn gives readers a glimpse into the world of the "Mere," or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a rough, gritty, action-packed scene dictated by money and testosterone--a place where women are outsiders. Lynn, an artistic type who never properly explains (and doesn't seem to know herself) why she wanted to prove herself in a place like the Merc, uses the stories of the many women she interviewed and heard stories of to illustrate how a man's success is easily measured in dollars, while a woman's success takes into account many complicated factors. The harassment, teasing, double standards, unfair practices and overall rough-and-tumble environment make for an exciting, fast-paced backdrop in which men are traders and women are wannabes, gold diggers and worse. The book's pace is good, the women's stories are sometimes downright riveting and this account reads like a novel. These women aren't heroines--most are in it for the money, and there is little in the way of happy endings or morals for the stories. But readers are treated to a skilled presentation of the sights, sounds and even smells of a world that few women--or men, for that matter--ever truly understand. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Leg the Spread: a Woman's Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys' Club of Commodities Trading." Publishers Weekly, 12 July 2004, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA119511273&it=r&asid=8deb38f6d96a5eb2e6a40742ef6b4318. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A119511273
Book Review: The Whistleblower – Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice by Kathryn Bolkovac
Mar 16, 2011 | By: Michelle Brock
I just finished reading the riveting true story of Kathryn Bolkovac, author of The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice. Here is an excerpt from the back cover:
When Nebraska police officer and divorced mother of three Kathryn Bolkovac saw a recruiting announcement for private military contractor DynCorp International, she applied and was hired. Good money, world travel, and the chance to help rebuild a war-torn country sounded like the perfect job.
Bolkovac was shipped out to Bosnia, where DynCorp had been contracted to support the UN peacekeeping mission. She was assigned as a human rights investigator, heading the gender affairs unit. The lack of proper training provided sounded the first alarm bell, but once she arrived in Sarajevo, she found out that things were a lot worse. At great risk to her personal safety, she began to unravel the ugly truth about officers involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution and their connections to private mercenary contractors, the UN, and the U.S. State Department.
Fiction author Steven King says that readers expect fiction to be believable and non-fiction to be unbelievable. Based on the fact that several times I caught myself collecting my jaw off the floor while reading this book, it is safe to say the Whistleblower falls into the latter category. The book confirms what I wrote in a previous post about how some DynCorp (America’s largest military contractor) and UN peacekeepers exploit the vulnerability of women in war-torn countries.
Here are a few things that stood out to me as I was reading:
Dive in. The book gets to an exciting start and reads like a story, making it easy to follow while weaving important factual information into the plot.
Shocking discovery. DynCorp background checks for the people they hire are poor or non-existent, and training for the field is minimal. Considering that these people are going to be working within different cultures, political climates, and economic landscapes, thorough training is absolutely essential if they are to affect positive change.
Bolkovac tells of how many of her co-workers simply wanted to blow things up and show locals how to use force. This reminded me of a U.S. soldier I met on a plane who boasted to me about shooting whatever he wanted overseas because he could. Hooligans should not be permitted to serve in a place where war, death, and pain still hang heavily in the air.
First alert. Bolkovac’s first exposure to peacekeepers creating demand for sex trafficking victims was hearing a co-worker boast about where to find “really nice twelve to fifteen year-olds.”
Breeding Ground. The book does a good job explaining why conflict zones are especially attractive to human traffickers:
Bosnia fit the bill for a healthy breeding ground. Human trafficking follows a predictable path of infestation: it seeks out environments that are warm with tumult, such as the aftermath of war or the fall of communism. Then it preys on desperate victims who are brought in over porous borders and past bribable guards. Strategically, it breeds near a region teeming with internationals, because they are the ones who have the money to feed it (p.85).
Irony: How is it that those who are supposed to be spreading peace in the world are in fact fueling and participating in the flesh trade? The sheer number of colleagues that Bolkovac found guilty of this crime, combined with the ‘sweep under the rug’ attitude of those in leadership, makes us all long for justice.
Evidence gathered. I struggled reading about how Bolkovac was mistreated by her superiors due to her discoveries, but was fascinated by her ability to collect evidence against her co-workers. She was demoted and later fired, and escaped Bosnia because of threats to her own safety – from the very company that she had worked for!
Admiration. Bolkovac took DynCorp to court and made headlines. How many people are courageous enough to take on a corporate giant with government ties? Since then, DynCorp has changed their legal jurisdiction to Dubai, where it is virtually impossible for new lawsuits to be brought against them effectively.
Out of Your Pocket. To bring it closer to home, those of you who live in the U.S. are paying for DynCorp’s operations with your tax money. Is this kind of behaviour what you want your money to support?
There is so much more I want to write about this book, but will leave the rest for you to read yourself. You can buy the book here. And for those of you who don’t like to read, you will be happy to know that a movie is being made about Bolkovac’s experience! I will keep you posted.
Has anyone else read this book? What do you think of international peace keepers buying and selling women and children? Do you have an experience with DynCorp you’d like to share? Would love to hear your comments below.
Michelle Brock
The Whistleblower - Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice
Review by CSRwire Contributing Writer Elaine Cohen
By Kathryn Bolkovac and Cari Lynn
Published by Palgrave Macmillan ISBN: 978-0-230-10802-8
Description
When Nebraska police officer and divorced mother of three Kathryn Bolkovac saw a recruiting announcement for private military contractor DynCorp International, she applied and was hired. Good money, world travel, and the chance to help rebuild a war-torn country sounded like the perfect job. She was soon shipped to Bosnia, where DynCorp had been contracted to support the UN peacekeeping mission. She was assigned as a human rights investigator, heading the gender affairs unit. The lack of proper training provided to her sounded an alarm bell, but once she arrived in Sarajevo, she found out that things were a lot worse than she imagined. At great risk to herself, Kathy began to unravel the ugly truth about officers involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution, and their connections to private mercenary contractors, the UN, and the U.S. State Department. Soon, she was demoted, then fired. Feeling threatened with bodily harm, she fled the country, bringing the incriminating documents with her. Thanks to the evidence she had collected, Kathy won a lawsuit against DynCorp, finally exposing what they had done. Here, Kathy warns of the inherent danger when we contract out our wars and that it is our responsibility to protect the weak and disenfranchised in times of peace. Both gripping and inspiring, this amazing true story of courage and honour in the face of insurmountable odds shows that just one voice can make a difference.
Commentary
Now an award-winning movie taglined "a drama based on the experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop who served as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia and outed the U.N. for covering up a sex scandal," The Whistleblower is much more than that. It's an exposure of the worst kind of corruption, human rights abuse, vile self-interest, lies, fabrications and corporate cover-ups present at the intersection of the United Nations, the U.S. Government and military contractors who exploit tax-payers' money by complying with human rights crimes in the name of peace. It is also the compelling story of a woman who refused to remain silent about these abuses in the face of significant personal danger. It's a lesson for everyone involved in allocation of national budgets and procurement about the controls necessary to administer contractors and the way they fulfill their responsibilities. It's also a drama, a love-story, an action-packed thriller and a fascinating read. For anyone involved in corporate responsibility, it's a case study about ethics, human rights and the need to protect those who speak out about corrupt practices in business. Finally, it's a wake-up call to shake all those in positions of authority out of complacency and complicity and urge them to clean up the system.
Kathy Bolkovac's story begins when she applies for a role in the International Police Task Force (ITPF) in Bosnia in 1998. The organization providing these "rent-a-cop" services is DynCorp International, "a global government services provider in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives, delivering support solutions for defense, diplomacy, and international development." In this case, the contract was in the framework of the UN mandated IPTF in Bosnia and Herzegovina (formerly Yugoslavia) following the Serbian attack on Sarajevo and the ensuing war for which Slobodan Milosevic was later charged with genocide. The ITPF is composed of UN member countries' national police force representatives. The U.S., not having a national police force, would play its role through providing the services of private contractors. Enter Dyncorp and their recruitment drive, which propelled Kathy Bolkovac to a role as a Human Rights Investigator.
It doesn't take the smart, conscientious and rather outspoken Kathy Bolkovac long to realized that all is not kosher in Sarajevo. She quickly starts to fight for the protection of female victims of domestic violence, winning a breakthrough court ruling which would serve as a base to advance programs addressing violence against women in the region, while unraveling the grim details of the involvement of DynCorp personnel in the trafficking of young girls across East European borders, detention of women for prostitution, visits to brothels and holding women captive for all of the above. After facing many setbacks (disappearing files, delaying tactics, intimidation, etc.) in trying to bring these issues to light, in 2000, Kathy sent a desperate email to 50 personnel involved in the Bosnia mission, entitled "don't read this if you have a weak stomach or a guilty conscience." The email detailed the difference between prostitutes and trafficking victims and the stages of how women end up as prostitutes and sexual slaves, imploring all involved in the mission to ensure they serve and protect people rather than playing a role in facilitating and engaging in human abuses and crime. Her boss immediately informed her that her email was "not a good idea" and Kathy was subsequently dismissed, ostensibly for falsification of work records, a claim which was entirely fabricated.
Bravely battling against all the corporate muscle DynCorp could muster, Kathy had her day in court (taking home a settlement of a mere $175,000) winning her case for unfair dismissal while exposing the illegal, unethical and irresponsible practices of DynCorp International and their poorly trained, inadequately managed and ineffectively deployed personnel. Kathy ends her account of her own story by making some recommendations on policies for police officers recruited for international missions. Kathy writes: "I have spent many sleepless nights… wondering why these blatantly illegal behaviors were simply allowed to be swept under the rug. And yet reports of immoral and illegal behavior among DynCorp's civilian peacekeepers …continue to make front page news with alarming regularity." You can get a sense of this from Corpwatch's Dyncorp page.
Beyond the personal story of heroine Kathy Bolkovac and the horrors of how she was treated for simply doing her job, as well as anger about the plight of defenseless women caught up in immoral exploitation, this book is an eye-opener about the inner workings of a highly profitable industry which should be head and shoulders above the rest in terms of protecting human rights, revealing it to be a hotbed of the worst kind of intrigue, politics and abuse. Questions about the responsibility of the U.S. government in monitoring the activities of its contracted service providers as well as the integrity of this multi-billion dollar corporation remain in your mind. Despite DynCorp's Code of Ethics, complete with Q and A's, The Whistleblower leaves you with a sense of despair that so much is yet to be done while few people are prepared to speak out and be accountable. The Whistleblower is a sobering, important read with all the romance, tension and intrigue of a bestseller title in the crime fiction category. Regrettably, this one is actually true. Oh, and I can't wait to see the movie.
About Elaine Cohen
Elaine Cohen is a Sustainability Consultant and Reporter at Beyond Business and blogger on sustainability reporting and author of: CSR for HR: A necessary business partnership to advance responsible business practices.
This commentary is written by a valued member of the CSRwire contributing writers' community and expresses this author's views alone.
An Arduous but Triumphant Journey
By Elaine Elinson
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JUNE 21, 2017
IN HER FOREWORD to Susan Burton’s harrowing new memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton, Michelle Alexander describes a courageous woman with deep brown skin who “freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety,” changing their lives “forever by her heroism.”
“Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman,” Alexander writes, “I know her as Susan.”
As I delved into Susan Burton’s tumultuous life, I realized that Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, was not dealing in hyperbole. Burton’s journey, from childhood abuse, teenage motherhood, prostitution, and crippling drug addiction through the prison cells of California to founder of A New Way of Life and tenacious advocate for criminal justice reform, is truly a modern-day freedom fighter’s.
Through the lens of her own painful but compelling history, Burton illuminates the tragic but often marginalized experiences of the tens of thousands of women who find themselves behind bars. Though their voices are rarely heard, women prisoners face not only the same abuse by the criminal justice system and those who enforce it as men, but also added burdens upon release, including the cruel barriers that keep them from reuniting with (and sometimes even seeing) their own children.
The enormous rise in the number of women prisoners means their stories can no longer be ignored. Today, there are seven times as many women in prison as in 1980, the majority for nonviolent offenses. As many as 94 percent have experienced physical or sexual abuse.
The toll is especially harsh for African-American women. Though drug use and dealing occur at similar rates across racial and ethnic lines, black women are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses as white women. According to the Sentencing Project, the lifetime likelihood that a white woman will be imprisoned is one in 118. For black women, it is one in 19.
Burton is brutally frank and never self-aggrandizing. Her voice rings with authenticity whether when describing childhood abuse, attempts to reunite with her estranged daughter, or the constant frustration with facing government officials who turn a deaf ear to her pleas for change. The parallels she draws with her slave ancestry are especially powerful. Forced to shower under the sharp gaze of a prison guard, she thinks of her ancestors, “ordered to strip in slave pens as masters sized them up.” Yanked from her cell in the middle of the night, she recalls her “African ancestors bound and dragged onto slave ships.” Should incarcerated women dare forget their subservience to the prison system, Burton notes, their uniforms are stamped, “Property of the State of California.”
Burton and co-author journalist Cari Lynn start each chapter with a grim statistic, reminding the reader, for example, that the United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, with 2.2 million people behind bars. These figures are jarring, and serve a dual purpose. They frame a section of Burton’s singular life, but they also weld her story to the lives of many other women, underscoring that her history, in turn traumatic and audacious, is not unique.
Burton’s early childhood in Watts was comfortable and happy, until her loving and attentive father lost his steady factory job, became despondent, started drinking heavily, and eventually abandoned the family. Her mother raised six children on her own, cleaning wealthy white families’ homes in Beverly Hills. Embittered and angry, she lashed out at her children, especially her only daughter Susan. Other neighbors endured the same downward spiral, and Burton’s familiar neighborhood became overrun with gangs and crime. She reminds us that almost half of African-American children under the age of six grow up in poverty, just as she did.
Even one of her few joys as a young girl — becoming a Woodcraft Ranger (“the poor girl’s Brownies”) and selling cookies — turned into a nightmare. Her best customer turned out to be a pedophile who abused her for years, while her mother turned a blind eye. When she was raped on the way home from a Christmas party at age 14, she became pregnant; she gave birth to her daughter in a home for unwed teenagers.
Once an excellent student, the 15-year-old Burton began cutting school and smoking grass. When her mother threatened to send her to juvenile hall, she ran away from home. Alone and penniless, she soon found herself in the clutches of a man who thrust her into the world of prostitution and drug dealing. It was to cast a shadow over her life for decades.
After several run-ins with the law, including stints in jail, she hoped to leave that life behind with the birth of her son K.K. But the world once again crashed around her when K.K., at age five, was hit by a speeding police car and killed. Despairing, Burton turned back to alcohol and cocaine. But even those were not enough to erase the searing pain of her child’s death, and she found something new on the streets that could — crack.
Burton writes of crack cocaine’s sudden arrival:
[T]here’d been a major shift in South L.A.: lots of people were all about small, white chalky rocks. You could buy these rocks, wrapped in tin foil or stacked in small glass vials, on most every corner in my community. You lit them and smoked them, and it hit you fast and hard. I’d never seen this drug before — and neither had the police. Crack had come to town mysteriously and seemingly overnight. One day it didn’t exist, the next it did. Like a Biblical plague of locusts […] crack swarmed out of nowhere straight into South Central and ravaged the place.
The new, dirt-cheap drug devastated both her neighborhood and her life. “The escape it brought was instantaneous. […] It didn’t matter what my mother said, or how my daughter looked at me. Crack made nothing else matter.”
It was just a matter of time until Burton was arrested again — but this time the sentence was measured in years rather than months. The epidemic coincided with Reagan’s War on Drugs and the sentences for crack, which flooded black neighborhoods, were 100 times as long as those for powdered cocaine, the form favored by whites. Thus began Burton’s longest incarceration, and her beloved daughter became one of the approximately five million children in the United States who have had a parent behind bars.
Like the classic fictional prisoner in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer, Burton’s descent into the penal system became more and more grueling and degrading with each sentence. Because women were being incarcerated at record-breaking rates, the prisons were perilously overcrowded. At one point, Burton was sent on a bus to the men’s prison at Avenal, California. “No wonder California’s prisoners had the nation’s highest suicide rate — a shocking 80 per cent higher,” she writes.
Buses loaded with prisoners were spotted driving aimlessly around the state, stopping at a prison for bathrooms and a meal, and then it was back on the bus. […] Busloads of prisoners were living on the road in what amounted to mobile prisons, waiting for word that someone had been released or died and a bed had opened up.
But as the book’s subtitle suggests, Burton — after many failed attempts — found her way out of prison, drug addiction, and the defeatism that haunted her early years. Life on the outside brought on a whole new set of challenges: where would she find a job, a place to live, sobriety, a supportive community?
When she got off the bus in downtown Los Angeles, around the corner from Skid Row, she found, “[i]t’s nothing like the freedom you’d dreamed about in your cell. This freedom smells of urine and stale beer. Lingering to check out the new releases are pimps and drug dealers […] They all know you are easy prey.”
But with grit and tenacity, she ultimately overcame the obstacles, successfully completing a private drug rehab program (none had ever been offered to her in prison), and took on multiple jobs as a home health care worker to earn a living. Acutely aware that the problems she faced were common to many women in her community, she took what savings she had, and a signature from a relative who had no prison record to impede his credit rating, to purchase a small bungalow in Watts, with a lemon tree in the backyard. Knowing that half of the people on parole in Los Angeles were homeless, this was one problem she thought she could help solve.
With few resources, Burton was determined to help other formerly incarcerated women find help once they were released.
I went to the bus station […] I didn’t know who’d be getting off the bus, but I knew that every day women released from prison were on it. I showed up there because I wished someone had been there for me. Sometimes I saw a familiar face get off the bus, someone I’d served time with. “I have a house in South L.A.,” I offered. “There’s a bed if you’d like it. It’s drug and alcohol free. You don’t have to go back to the streets if you don’t want to.”
When Burton went back inside the women’s prison, it was to find women who wanted to stay in her home after they were released. “Prison was the last place I ever wanted to return to,” she writes, but these visits — even when she was subjected to humiliating denials of clearance or sneered at by guards — were made with purpose and dignity.
Thoughts of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth filled my head. In some small way, I hoped my presence and my voice could offer women a way out of the cycle, could help them find their own lasting freedom.
With the support of many friends, especially those like her colleagues in the Community Coalition and All of Us or None, an organization of formerly incarcerated people, Burton launched A New Way of Life, providing housing, a legal clinic, job training, and a leadership training program for the newly released women. Realizing that helping individuals would not be enough to meet the challenge of a racist and corrupt criminal justice system, she began advocating for legislation to make broader changes, including “Ban the Box” and Proposition 47, which allows for the retroactive reduction of certain felonies to misdemeanors and the expungement of criminal records.
To date, Burton has purchased five homes, and supported more than 900 women as they moved from an existence completely controlled by the corrections system to independence. She encourages the residents to participate in political and advocacy campaigns, including registering people in jails to vote. As she watches women from A New Way of Life making phone calls to get out the vote, Burton reflects, “[M]any who were still on parole and did not, themselves, have the right to vote. This, I realized, was a new type of underground railroad.”
Even after being honored by the Soros Open Society Foundation and CNN, serving on the Little Hoover Commission, appearing on national TV, lecturing at Yale Law School, and being invited as an advisor to the federal Department of Justice, Burton is haunted by her prison record: appointed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to the Sybil Brand Commission to inspect conditions in women’s prisons, as an “ex-con,” she was initially denied clearance to enter the very correctional facilities she was supposed to evaluate.
There have been many valuable books published in recent years analyzing the racism and brutality that dominate the criminal justice system. These include Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Nell Bernstein’s Burning Down the House, and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. But rarely has such a powerful, personal perspective been made available to us, from a woman who has been on both sides of the prison bars. Our understanding of the criminal justice system is immeasurably strengthened by Susan Burton’s fierce, compassionate, and expressive voice, as she shares with the world her arduous, but ultimately triumphant, journey to Becoming Ms. Burton.
¤
Elaine Elinson is the co-author of Wherever There’s a Fight, winner of a Gold Medal in the 2010 California Book Awards, and the former editor of the ACLU News.
What I Learned From Susan Burton, a Modern-Day Harriet Tubman
Reading her life story will change the way you view the world.
By Michelle Alexander
May 11, 2017
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Activist and author Susan Burton. (Courtesy of The New Press)
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here once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair who freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety. She welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter, and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. This courageous soul knew well the fear and desperation of each one who came to her, seeing in their eyes all the pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom. Deep in the night she cried out to God begging for strength, and when she woke she began her work all over again, opening doors, planning escape routes, and holding hands with mothers as they wept for children they hoped to see again. A relentless advocate for justice, this woman was a proud abolitionist and freedom fighter. She told the unadorned truth to whomever would listen and spent countless hours training and organizing others, determined to grow the movement. She served not only as a profound inspiration to those who knew her but also as a real gateway to freedom for hundreds whose lives were changed forever by her heroism.
This essay is adapted from the foreword to Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn (The New Press, April 2017) and published with the permission of the author and The New Press.
Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman. I know her as Susan.
I met Susan Burton in 2010, but I learned her name years before. I was doing some research regarding the challenges of reentry for people incarcerated due to our nation’s cruel and biased drug war. At the time, I was in the process of writing The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness—a book that aimed to expose the ways the War on Drugs had not only decimated impoverished communities of color but also helped to birth a new system of racial and social control eerily reminiscent of an era supposedly left behind. The United States has become the world leader in imprisonment, having quintupled our prison population in a few short decades through a drug war and a “get tough” movement aimed at the poorest and darkest among us. I was writing a chapter that explains how tens of millions of people branded criminals and felons have been stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil-rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. I had mountains of policy analyses and data, but I was disturbed by the fact that few voices of those who actually had been impacted by these modern-day Jim Crow policies could be found in the research.
I scanned dozens of articles online, then paused when I stumbled upon an interview with a woman named Susan Burton. The integrity and authenticity of her voice was undeniable. She told the reporter plainly and directly what it felt like, as a recovering drug addict released from prison and struggling to survive, to be forced to “check the box” on the ubiquitous employment, housing, and food-stamp applications that asked the dreaded question, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” She knew full well that, once that box was checked, her application would be thrown straight in the trash. How would she survive without food, shelter, or a job? She described with clarity and conviction what it meant to be a second-class citizen in the so-called land of the free, and she insisted that she was determined to do everything she could to ensure that the laws, rules, policies, and practices that authorize legal discrimination against people with convictions are eventually abandoned, and that we begin to provide drug treatment rather than prison cells to people struggling with addiction and drug abuse. I learned Susan had created several safe homes for formerly incarcerated women and that she was part of a small but growing movement for the restoration of basic civil and human rights for people who have spent time behind bars. The interview moved me, and I thought I have to meet this woman.
Shortly after The New Jim Crow was published, I had my chance. A mutual friend introduced us via email, and Susan invited me to come to Los Angeles and visit the nonprofit organization she founded, A New Way of Life. She thanked me profusely for my book, and said that she, along with the formerly incarcerated women currently residing at the safe homes, wanted to organize a book event for me at a local community center. I told her that I would be thrilled to come and hoped to learn more about her work and lend support as best I could.
I was not prepared for what followed. Upon my arrival, Susan gave me a tour of the safe homes for formerly incarcerated women that operate as part of A New Way of Life. I’m not certain what I expected, but probably something similar to various halfway houses I’ve seen over the years. Instead, I discovered something else entirely. These were not facilities or shelters or way stations or simply housing for people released from prison who need support services. These were homes. Loving homes. Susan took me from house to house and showed me where the women slept and worked. The residents and staff greeted Susan with a measure of formality—“Good afternoon, Ms. Burton!—yet the warmth and love was palpable. In some of the bedrooms, paint was peeling off the walls, and mattresses for children were on the floor along with a few scattered stuffed animals. Clearly, every penny raised was immediately invested in providing more beds, houses, and services. The accommodations were sparse, to say the least. But they were also immaculate, and every woman I met expressed enormous gratitude for Susan and the lifeline she provided. Susan offered not just a place to sleep and to get desperately needed assistance but also emotional support as the women struggled to meet the seemingly endless and impossible requirements of parole and probation officers, as well as the demands of the most feared agency of them all: child protective services.
In California, like most states, women released from prison must meet a dizzying list of requirements if they hope to regain custody of their children, including showing they have secured employment and housing. Meeting these requirements is no small feat, particularly when hundreds of categories of jobs are off-limits to people with felony records, discrimination is still legal against them, public housing agencies routinely deny access to people based on criminal records, and—until recently—even food stamps weren’t available to people with drug convictions. Susan and her staff work tirelessly to help women at A New Way of Life meet these conditions, but they also go to court with them, hold hands with them, and pray with them, as judges decide whether custody will be terminated forever.
I remember calling Susan one day, long after my first visit, and catching her when she was at the courthouse with a young woman who had just lost custody—permanently—of her daughter. Susan’s voice was cracking and breaking over the phone, failing to hold back tears, as she erupted: “I’ve been down here all week at the courthouse, watching and waiting as these families are torn apart. I see these women doing everything they can, and still their babies are taken away. How can we do this to people? Does anyone really understand what’s going on here? We’re willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can’t have a job, and you can’t have housing, and because you don’t have either we’re going to take your kids too. Sometimes I think I can’t go on, that I just can’t bear to watch this or do this anymore.”
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But she does. Day in and day out, Susan is always there, welcoming women returning home from prison, providing them with as much support and guidance as possible, and walking with them into the courthouse. Over and over again. Like Harriet Tubman, who famously helped to build the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves who yearned to be free and reunite with their loved ones, Susan has committed her life to helping those held captive today make a genuine break for freedom, attempt to rebuild their lives and families, and hopefully begin to heal from the trauma of it all.
I don’t think I understood the full extent of the trauma experienced by people who churn through America’s prisons until I began taking the time to listen to their stories. Research suggests that people rarely change their minds or form a new world view based on facts or data alone; it is through stories (and the values systems embedded within them) that we come to reinterpret the world and develop empathy and compassion for others. Susan Burton’s life story—filled with trauma, struggle, and true heroism—is precisely the kind of story that has the potential to change the way we view our world. It is impossible to read her story and not feel challenged to reconsider basic assumptions about our criminal-injustice system, as well as the conscious and subconscious beliefs we hold about the living, breathing human beings we, as a nation, have condemned and discarded. In today’s political environment we are constantly encouraged—through the media, politicians, and government bureaucracies—to view certain groups of people defined by race and class as undeserving of care and concern, especially the drug addicts, criminals, and so-called illegals who are trapped in prisons, detention centers, and ghettos across the United States.
During my first visit to A New Way of Life, Susan sat me down on a couch in an empty safe home—the residents were out for the moment—and quietly began to tell her story. She explained that her odyssey with the criminal justice system began when her 5-year-old son was accidentally killed by a police officer employed by the Los Angeles Police Department. The officer was driving down her street in her South Central neighborhood and ran over her boy while he was crossing the street. The LAPD initially offered no compensation, no counseling, no trauma support—not even an apology. She fell into a deep, seemingly bottomless well of grief and depression.
I have no doubt things would’ve turned out differently if Susan had been wealthy and white. Even if she had been middle class and had access to a good health-insurance plan, she could’ve afforded years of therapy and been prescribed the best legal drugs available to help her cope with her trauma. But things were different for Susan. Lacking money and a support system, she turned to illegal drugs and became addicted to crack cocaine. Living in an impoverished black community under siege during the height of the War on Drugs, it was only a matter of time before Susan was arrested and offered her first plea deal. It would not be her last. Susan cycled in and out of prison for 15 years, trapped in a virtual undercaste—a parallel social universe that exists for those labeled criminals and felons in the era of mass incarceration. Every time she was released, she faced a web of discriminatory rules and laws that made survival next to impossible, and continued to self-medicate with illegal drugs.
By no small miracle, Susan was eventually granted admission to a private drug treatment facility and given a job. When she became clean, she decided to devote her life to ensuring that no other woman would ever have to suffer what she had been through. She began meeting the prison bus, as it released women onto the streets carrying nothing but a cardboard box with their belongings and a few dollars in their pockets. She said to these women, who were strangers to her, “Come home with me, sleep on my couch or on my floor. I’ll make sure you have a roof over your head and food to eat. You don’t have to turn to the streets tonight.”
Susan explained to me that, in the beginning, she simply wanted to give women who were struggling to make it on the outside food, shelter, safety, and some support as they pieced their lives back together again. But now, Susan said, she sees her mission and purpose as much broader. She aims to help build a movement, a human-rights movement that will provide a path to a new way of life for all of us. She co-founded All of Us or None, an organization dedicated to the restoration of basic civil and human rights for formerly incarcerated people, and has begun training the women who are part of A New Way of Life to be leaders, spokespeople, and organizers. She views the women who live and work with her not merely as people to be “helped,” but women who are joining in a shared struggle to remake their individual lives, while transforming their communities and the nation as a whole.
Since that talk on her couch several years ago, Susan and I have had many conversations about the future of movement building and advocacy to end mass incarceration. She has become a friend and a confidant, as well as my personal shero. Every time I speak with her I am reminded of why it is so critically important for people who have been directly impacted by injustice to emerge as partners and leaders of the movements for justice we aim to build. As a lawyer and as an academic, I am often surrounded by people who think they know the answers, as well as how to define the problem, and have endless opinions about what to do next. They’ve done their research and studied the data and read the reports and they know how to navigate the halls of power. Yet often what they lack is relevant life experience—the deep, profound ways of knowing and seeing that come from living through severe racial and social injustice and making a way out of no way. What I have found is that I have much more to learn from Susan Burton than she does from me, despite all of the research and writing I have done on these issues over the years.
Susan’s book, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, is not simply a story about a formerly incarcerated woman dedicated to working for justice and freedom in the era of mass incarceration. It is a story of a black woman who, as she often tells me, is “nothing special” and yet has somehow managed to transform her own life as well as hundreds of lives around her. She has emerged as a leading figure in the movement to end mass incarceration, always leading by example and never leading alone. This book tells a story of one woman known to staff and residents as Ms. Burton, but it is also tells a much broader, universal story about the utter fragility and breathtaking resilience of the human spirit—even in the face of severe sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. In the end, this is a story about how an entire system of oppressive rules, laws, policies, and practices has failed to permanently crush one woman’s spirit and the spirits of the many women who have walked through the doors of A New Way of Life, though surely that system has tried. To borrow the poetry of Maya Angelou, “And still like dust they rise.”
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Michelle AlexanderMichelle Alexander is a legal scholar, human rights advocate, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press).
Madam: A Novel of New Orleans
BY CARI LYNN, KELLIE MARTIN
Madam: A Novel of New Orleans follows the true story of Mary Deubler, a back- alley whore born into the licentious world of late 19th-century New Orleans. Mary comes from a long line of prostitutes but dreams about a better life in order to provide for her younger brother, Peter, and his wife, Charlotte. In this novel set against the push for a regulated district of vice, Mary must overcome tragedy and heartbreak on her rise to become New Orleans’ most famous madam.
New Orleans has always been a city set apart, and the world of sweltering temperatures, corruption, ragtime, and voodoo is brought vividly to life. In addition to Mary, this novel features a wide cast of characters, all interconnected in their dealings: Tom Anderson, the savvy but ruthless ruler of the New Orleans underworld; Countess Lulu White, the city’s premiere madam and queen of the demimonde; Ferdinand, an educated octoroon musician fighting against Jim Crow and the oppression of the late 19th century; and finally Sidney Story, the alderman who originated the district that would become known as Storyville. While they are all diverse and interesting, the sheer number of perspectives keeps the focus of the novel off Mary, who is the most fascinating of all. Madam ends with Mary’s transformation into Josie Arlington and, to some extent, suffers from it. Fewer deviations from Mary’s story would have allowed for more detail once she had achieved her fame; instead, the reader is treated to an epilogue written by Mary’s niece, Anna.
Despite these drawbacks, Madam is a fascinating account of New Orleans’ unsavory history and is recommended for lovers of New Orleans and general historical fiction readers.
In Madam: A Novel of New Orleans you will find yourself transported to a time when the grime and grit of the city would shock even the most liberal of us. The novel follows Mary Deubler, a rough but scrupulous young prostitute, caught in a business of selling herself to support her brother’s family. Things take a turn when her place of employment – The Alley, as they call it – is threatened by changing city ordinances, but the change brings about an opportunity for Mary to embrace the old American adage of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps. As easy to read as it is entertaining, this is a great book for a look back at a time in our history when men were men and women were practically disposable. While there are some plot holes, the book sends you hurtling into New Orleans in the late 1800s, so that you can almost smell the dank alleyways and hear the shouting of the newsies on the rough streets. Many of the characters are rich in detail and the historical details will undoubtedly leave you wondering where history leaves off and fiction begins.
REVIEWED BY: JENNIFER TATUM