900 Women

Located in the swamps of southern Louisiana, the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) is a minimum to maximum security prison exclusively for women that is staffed almost entirely by women. Susan Sarandon narrates this sensitive documentary profiling several inmates for whom LCIW is either a temporary or permanent home, including Heather Zerangue, a teenager serving a three-year sentence for aggravated assault and theft who attributes her anger to her estranged mother (who also served time); recovering heroin addict Keana Herbert, whose own mother, refusing to see her daughter give birth to another addicted child, turned her in to the police; and Mary Riley, a 68-year old serving a life sentence with no chance for parole for murdering her abusive husband. Zerangue's parole hearing and Herbert's efforts at rehabilitation are revealing of the Louisiana justice system's strengths and weaknesses, while Riley's mature reflections and in-house activism on behalf of other inmates provides a poignant counterpoint to the recurrent themes of home and family. Intimate and candid, this will be a useful addition to women's studies collections and larger public libraries. C, P. (A. Cantú)