When She Woke in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Oct 10, 2011 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: abortion, overdrive-library, audiobooks, science-fiction, fiction, distopia

One of the things I love about Science Fiction is its ability to mirror everyday problems and amplify them into a frightening future. In, When She Woke, Hillary Jordan takes on religious extremism and creates a world where abortion is again illegal and the punishment is chroming. Chroming is a colorization of the skin that will mark a criminal throughout their sentence (a different color for the type of crime). Prison is only reserved for the brutally violent. The process is actually a virus tha One of the things I love about Science Fiction is its ability to mirror everyday problems and amplify them into a frightening future. In, When She Woke, Hillary Jordan takes on religious extremism and creates a world where abortion is again illegal and the punishment is chroming. Chroming is a colorization of the skin that will mark a criminal throughout their sentence (a different color for the type of crime). Prison is only reserved for the brutally violent. The process is actually a virus that colors the skin and fades without renewal, but without renewal the person will “frag” out.

Hanah Pane lives in this world. A world that is eerily similar to our own. Born of what most would consider extremely religious Christian parents (actually creationists who believe dinosaurs and Adam and Eve co-existed), but considered normal by the day’s standards. The future America has taken a sharp turn to the right due to an atrocity and a “scourge” that leaves thousands infertile. The “scourge” is responsible for abortion being outlawed with new “Sanctity of Life” laws. These laws are very similar to a “personhood” law that was on a ballot initiative in Mississippi just last night.

Hanna Pane has had an abortion and is sentenced to 16 years as a Chrome (a red one for murder). From this beginning we watch a transformation that will leave anyone in rapture of her character. There are so many things that she must endure and she realizes the world that she lives in may not be what she thought it was.

I really loved this book. I loved it for the homage to The Scarlet Letter, but Jordan takes it in a different direction, making the book her own. Instead of making it about community hypocrisy, she turns into one woman’s journey out of the box, a journey to freedom.

The last line of the book gave me chills. It’s a combination of The Scarlet Letter, A Handmaid’s Tale, and Children of Men. A ripping-good read with heart and conscience, but doesn’t hit you over the head with morals or beliefs, just a questioning perspective of how things are.

Favorite Lines:

"Her first instinct was to try to make herself invisible. But then, suddenly defiant, she looked directly into the faces of her fellow passengers. These people felt so repelled by and morally superior to her. Most avoided her gaze, but a few glared back at her affronted that she dared to rest her eyes on them. She wondered how many of them were liars. Their outer purity masking crimes dark or darker than her own. How many would be chromes themselves if the truth in their hearts were revealed." p. 163

"She had always believed that her parents had done right by her, but now sitting mute at Stanton's table, she found herself seething for their choices. Why had they kept her life so small? Why had they never asked her what she wanted? At every possible turn she saw they had chosen a path that would keep her weak and dependent and the fact that they wouldn't see it that way, that they sincerely believed they had acted in her best interest didn't make it any less true, or them any less culpable." p. 253

“That’s what Raphael had called it, a procedure. These colorless and dispassionate words had calmed her. She saw in retrospect that they had, in fact, enabled her to go through with it. You didn’t agonize over a procedure. You proceeded with it. A procedure cannot produce regret or require expiation. But how different the scenario became when you substituted words like murder and abomination. The truth of it, Hannah thought now, lay somewhere in between. She had ended her pregnancy out of love and out of fear. It hadn’t been simply a procedure, but neither had it been an atrocity.” Chapter 8

"One by one she had conjured all the boxes she had been put into. The good girl box and the good Christian box, the confines of her sewing room above the garage, the mistress box played out in the box of all those indistinguishable hotel rooms, the sweltering room in apartment 122, the jail cell, the interregation room, the witness box at her trial, and then the bad daughter and fallen woman box, her red body in the mirrored cell at the chrome ward, a box, within a box, within a box. The enlightenment room, Mrs. Henley’s parlor, the locked room at the safe house at Stanton’s, the wooden crate, and now, for a second time, the trunk of a car. She saw with a painful blaze of clarity that everyone one of those boxes have been of her own making, either by consent, or lack of resistance. She had no right to bitterness. She had put herself in them, and she would get herself out, she vowed. And once she was out, she’d never willingly be put into another box again.” Chapter 9 ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 30, 2013 Kelly rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Like · see review

Oct 14, 2011 Debbie rated it liked it

Shelves: sciencefiction

In a dystopian, not so distant future, the religious right has taken control of the government and turned the United States into a theocracy that is, shall we say, an unsafe place for women. Criminals are no longer kept in prison; their skin in dyed (chromed) and they must maintain that color for the length of their sentences. The government takes no responsibility for their care, so the majority of chromes live hand to mouth until they are killed or commit suicide.

Hannah Payne becomes a "Red" ...more

Like · see review

Nov 02, 2011 Sharlene rated it liked it

Shelves: library, 2011, ebook

Hannah is red. A Red. Red for murder. Her skin has been tinted for the crime she has committed. For in When She Woke‘s dystopian America, abortion is a crime.

It is a dramatic, movie-like, opening.

“When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.

She saw her hands first. She held them in front of her eyes, squinting up at them. For a few seconds, shadowed by her eyelashes and backlit by the hard white light emanating from the ceiling, they ap Hannah is red. A Red. Red for murder. Her skin has been tinted for the crime she has committed. For in When She Woke‘s dystopian America, abortion is a crime.

It is a dramatic, movie-like, opening.

“When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.

She saw her hands first. She held them in front of her eyes, squinting up at them. For a few seconds, shadowed by her eyelashes and backlit by the hard white light emanating from the ceiling, they appeared black. Then her eyes adjusted, and the illusion faded. She examined the backs, the palms. They floated above her, as starkly alien as starfish.”

Hannah spends thirty days in the Chrome ward, after which she has to figure out how to survive in the outside world. For she has to live as a Red for 16 years – her sentenced extended thanks to her refusal to name both the father of her child (a public figure, a married man, a forbidden love) and the abortionist. And Chromes (also Yellows, Greens, Blues depending on their crime) live on the fringes, in ghettos, and are closely monitored and easily tracked by anyone. It is especially terrifying for Hannah, whose life had been devoted to her faith and family, whose 26 years have been sheltered and closed.

Things go downhill (if that’s possible) when she checks into a halfway home which is all about repentance and prayers and crappy food. Hannah later meets a pro-choice group and, well, a variety of things happen but let’s leave it at that.

I constantly thought of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as I read this. And if I had actually read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, I would have figured out that Hester Prynne = Jordan’s Hannah Payne (note to self: read The Scarlet Letter!).

However, while When She Woke has a startling, fascinating beginning and setting, once in the outside world, Hannah meets some cliched, others wooden, characters. Hannah herself, well, she is a bit of a mystery to me. The change we see in her, at first meek and obedient, then strong and determined, is huge especially in such little time, but I wanted more (my expectations for fictional characters are remarkably high). I wanted her not to have done that silly thing she did towards the end, but I guess we all have frailties.

I liked this book. I think I wanted to love it, as I loved The Handmaid’s Tale. However, I am still pretty interested in reading Jordan’s first book, Mudbound, which I’ve heard plenty of good about. ...more

Like · see review

Nov 09, 2012 Julia rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, politics, classics, religion, horror, nook

Another great book by a Yaddo author, a brilliant re-telling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet letter set in a distopian future.

I cannot decide if it is a 4 or 5, so I'm marking 4 but might revise within the next week, depending on how much mulling over it I do. It should be at least a 4.5... ...more

Like · see review