Little attention has been paid to the lives led by families of prisoners. Using a feminist approach, the author explores how the lives of 25 wives of prisoners at Soledad prison are affected by the incarceration of their husbands. Relationships, stigma, coping, finances, children, the prison system, and rehabilitation are explored through in-depth interviews. This study describes the experiences of the wives and seeks to connect their experiences to a conceptual framework that explores the context of sex, race, and class inequalities. The author discusses prison policy recommendations to improve the lot of prisoners' families, emphasizing the ways in which life is organized in families where the husband/father is imprisoned. Several themes emerge in this work. The powerful role of the "wife," women as caretakers, and the subordinate position these women hold in society due to their sex, class, and race, are some examples. Recommendations are made to ease the burden of visiting, and encourage maintenance of family roles.

With over 65 percent of households having a pet, and Americans spending over $60 billion on them each year, it's a proven statistic that Americans love animals. Public opinions consistently show we favor compassion for all animals. Animal welfare, rights, and protection is one of the most popular issue areas to which individual donors give, and is an area in which people working with rescue and nonprofit organizations are extremely passionate. In Advocates for Animals, Lori Girshick not only provides a better understanding of the laws surrounding animal rights but looks at the nonprofit organizations and people who are making a huge difference in today's growing animal protection community. These volunteers and organizations fill the gap in what laws, policies, practices, and services do not address for animal rights/protection. Through the personal reflections of 204 individuals who volunteer or work with animals in a wide range of circumstances we learn about their paths to involvement, what they do, what they hope to achieve, and how this has impacted their lives. Many experts speak of the importance of protecting the rights of animals, and without human support, many animals face abuse, neglect, and suffering. Advocates for Animals invites you to join these efforts, enriching your own lives and living compassion in action toward animals.

With over 65 percent of households having a pet, and Americans spending over $60 billion on them each year, it's a proven statistic that Americans love animals. Public opinions consistently show we favor compassion for all animals. Animal welfare, rights, and protection is one of the most popular issue areas to which individual donors give, and is an area in which people working with rescue and nonprofit organizations are extremely passionate. In Advocates for Animals, Lori Girshick not only provides a better understanding of the laws surrounding animal rights but looks at the nonprofit organizations and people who are making a huge difference in today's growing animal protection community. These volunteers and organizations fill the gap in what laws, policies, practices, and services do not address for animal rights/protection. Through the personal reflections of 204 individuals who volunteer or work with animals in a wide range of circumstances we learn about their paths to involvement, what they do, what they hope to achieve, and how this has impacted their lives. Many experts speak of the importance of protecting the rights of animals, and without human support, many animals face abuse, neglect, and suffering. Advocates for Animals invites you to join these efforts, enriching your own lives and living compassion in action toward animals.

Incarcerated women in the United States are largely an invisible population because of their small numbers, their involvement in less violent and serious offenses, and their neglect by most criminologists. Yet all too often prison has become a dumping ground for women who lack options for self-support, or who need drug treatment, job training, or a haven from battering.
This work draws on the life stories of forty women inmates at a minimum security prison in North Carolina. It explores their lives before imprisonment, enabling the reader to understand their incarceration within the context of childhood and adolescent experiences, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, low education levels, and poor work histories. Lori B. Girshick relates the prisoners' views of doing time, the criminal justice system, and their own rehabilitation. She also interviews family members, friends, and social service providers to show how support networks function or fail.
Girshick argues convincingly that the treatment of women in society creates circumstances that lead some of them to break the law, and she makes specific recommendations for policies that address the need for social change and for community programs designed to deter crime.

In this extraordinary book, based on 150 in-depth interviews, Lori B. Girshick, a sociologist and social justice activist, brings together the voices of sex- and gender-diverse people who speak with absolute candor about their lives. Girshick presents transpeople speaking in their own voices about identity, coming out, passing, sexual orientation, relationship negotiations and the dynamics of attraction, homophobia (including internalized fears), and bullying. She exposes the guilt and the shame that "gender police" use in their attempts to exert control and points out the many ways transpeople are discriminated against in daily life, from filling out identification documents to gender-segregated bathrooms.
By showing us a variety of descriptions of diverse real lives and providing a thorough exploration of the embodied experiences of gender variant people, Girshick demonstrates that there is nothing inherently binary about gender, and that the way each of us experiences our own gender is, in fact, normal and natural.