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Or even, a nauseating example of white privilege.
In Blakingers memoir,Corrections in Ink, she reflects on those mean-spirited tweets.
I realized they were not wrong about the privilege, she writes.
I remember thinking,Wow!
This woman has got to write a book.And now she has.
Blakinger had an eight ball of blow and six ounces of heroin.
So it was a street value of about $33,600.
But a New York City dime of dope might go for double the price in Ithaca.
Point is, she had a lot of it.
Blakinger grew up in the safe suburbs of Pennsylvania.
Her mom went to Cornell and was a grade-school teacher, her dad a Harvard-educated lawyer.
Blakinger attended good schools, had a curfew, was a figure skater, competed in nationals.
Bulimia helped her cut weight until she couldnt cut it on the ice.
At Harvard Summer School, of all places, she went all good-girl-gone-bad and spiraled into drugs: Pot.
But the goal was heroin.
Not so much because I was craving the drug as because I was craving the darkness.
Through it all, Blakinger remained a good student.
Her books prose is utterly readable.
WithCorrections in Ink, you get what you came for.
In some of the flashback chapters, were yanked into wild scenes.
I can hear a universe of chaos inside each droplet of water falling around me.
Truth is, Blakinger is a white woman whos lucky to be alive.
The institution of corrections fails to offer any real cathartic programs for addicts.
But it does provide a sobering time-out many of us need.
I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if I hadnt gotten locked up 21 years ago.
I was selling drugs like Blakinger, but I also shot and killed a man.
The system is broken.
It also worked in my case.
Its the paradox of my life, too.
Blakinger was not locked up for long, yet she quickly realized the universal pointlessness of jail.
No matter how much you want to start over …
The clack of cell keys does not teach you remorse.
The clash of a steel door does not bring you redemption.
There is no soundtrack here for that.
If you want one, youll have to write it yourself.
The only time they talk to you is when theyre punishing you.
It is not corrections.
It is not public safety.
It is systemic failure.
These journalistic digressions are informative, but the way she inserts them takes away from her own difficult experiences.
When it comes to feeling marginalized, prison has a pretty equalizing effect on us all.
Whats more, in some prison circumstances, Blakinger might have been a minority.
At times, Im sure the color of her skin felt like a liability.
While she doesnt harp on it, I know she had plenty of fear.
Many of the women she was with were loud and tough and angry.
Blakinger realizes this, and its why she has succeeded.
I would not hide from my past, Blakinger writes.
I would be relentlessly honest and open about it.
If I told my story on my own terms then no one could use it against me.
I would own it.
The editor then saw that Blakinger had written for the Cornell paper and offered her a job.
For the HoustonChronicle, she wrote aboutTexass broken dental servicesand got prisoners dentures.
But addiction, which leads many of us to criminality, can affect anyone.
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