Inside Out

A professor of English and a prisoner-student in her classes at San Quentin share their experiences in the classroom and in the severe world of the prison. The book invokes sympathy without sentimentality. It looks at prison squarely, omits none of its terrifying or disgusting aspects, yet insists on our humane engagement with the plight of the imprisoned and with the blatant defects of the system. A lot of it is funny. And almost all of it is fascinating in its factuality.