Review: "Mainline Mama" by Keeonna Harris

Mainline Mama by Keeonna Harris
Published February 2025 via Amistad
★★★★

Harris had dreams: grow up, go to Spelman, meet and marry a Morehouse man, become an OB/GYN. And then maybe think about babies. But at fourteen, Harris met Jason, her first boyfriend and first love. At fifteen, she had a baby, which tipped her life sideways. And again when she was fifteen, Jason was sentenced to 22 years in prison, changing the course of both of their lives for good.

Since my family's expectations had changed, I knew I had to set new expectations for myself. Nobody was talking about me going to college anymore; I was rerouted into what my family thought was a good, stable job: working customer service for a phone company. [...] Now that I had a baby I wasn't supposed to shoot for the stars; I was kept grounded to set up a good foundation. (loc. 1504*)

Mainline Mama chronicles Harris's experience of two decades of a relationship that could never be on her own terms. From asking her grandmother to take her to the prison to visit—because she was too young to visit on her own, and her mother didn't approve of the relationship—to becoming a veteran visitor who knew the ins and outs and workarounds to planning her wedding in a prison, Harris had to grow up fast, and she had to learn a whole host of skills and information that most of us will never have to use.

Of all the dreams for my wedding, watching my whole family go through a security checkpoint was never one of them. (loc. 197)

From a writing perspective, this is a three-star book. It's solid and extremely readable, but it can get a bit repetitive and occasionally a bit soap-box-y (though—let's be clear—it's not unwarranted). But from a content perspective, this is five stars all the way. Harris's voice and story are so underrepresented. This is her story, not Jason's, though of course the two are entwined.

Jason was a twenty-one-year-old boy who couldn't cry in public, and the only way we could talk was over the phone, in front of everybody in prison. A gang member in prison couldn't be on the phone whining and crying. Couldn't be sad, so he got mad. All the sadness turned into anger, and sometimes it was directed at me. We went through things we couldn't or didn't know how to talk to each other about. (loc. 1091)

As Harris visited and wrote to Jason, learning the rules of one prison after another—sometimes driving seven hours for a visit, or sleeping in her car overnight—she saw, and experienced firsthand, how the prison system impacted not only those who were incarcerated but also loved ones. She was not in prison, but she was limited in when she could call and when she could visit; limited in what she could wear and what she could bring; limited in how long she could hug her boyfriend (and later husband) when she visited. And: Because they were growing up in parallel trajectories, able to see each other but not on their own terms and never within their individual day-to-day lives, they were not able to understand what each other's realities really looked like.

Without spoiling anything, I'll say that this book in its current form is probably only possible because of the way things panned out, and also because Harris is writing from decades of experience rather than a year or two. It's worth noting that this isn't a book about why Jason went to prison or whether or not his punishment was reasonable; it's a story about what happens to the people left on the outside. It is a complicated, messy story, but it is well worth it for her perseverance, her insights on what life is like for those impacted by the prison system but not incarcerated themselves, and for her clear-eyed view of how long and how far the ripples caused by incarceration can extend.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.