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Interrupted Life – Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States - California Scholarship Online
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Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States

Rickie Solinger and Rebecca Sharitz

Abstract

This book is a collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This work brings together many voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women prisoners' experiences as they try to sustain relations wi ... More

Keywords: incarcerated women, women prisoners, prison system, United States, children, family, healthcare, rights, sentencing

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2010 Print ISBN-13: 9780520252493
Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 DOI:10.1525/california/9780520252493.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Rickie Solinger, author

Rebecca Sharitz, editor

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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

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Introduction. Certain Failures: Representing the Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States

Ruby C. Tapia

Part One Defining the Problem

1 Unpacking the Crisis: Women of Color, Globalization, and the Prison-Industrial Complex

Julia Sudbury

2 Glossary of Terms

Tina Reynolds

3 The Long Shadow of Prison: My Messy Journey through Fear, Silence, and Racism toward Abolition

Kay Whitlock

4 Unpeeling the Mask

Elizabeth Leslie

5 Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Bill of Rights

San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership

6 United Nations Report on Violence against Women in U.S. Prisons

Joanne Archibald

7 Being in Prison

Joanne Archibald

8 Wearing Blues

Kinnari Jivani

Part Two Being a Mother from Inside

9 Get on the Bus: Mobilizing Communities across California to Unite Children with Their Parents in Prison

Suzanne Jabro, and Kelly Kester-Smith

10 Do I Have to Stand for This?

Kimberly Burke

11 Out of Sight, NOT Out of Mind: Important Information for Incarcerated Parents Whose Children Are in Foster Care

Children of Incarcerated Parents Program NYC Administration for Children’s Services

12 The Impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act on Children of Incarcerated Parents

Arlene F. Lee, Philip M. Genty, and Mimi Laver Child Welfare League of America

13 ASFA, TPR, My Life, My Children, My Motherhood

E. Carole

14 The Birthing Program in Washington State

Tabitha Hall, and Christy Hall

15 Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Loss in Prison: A Personal Story

Kebby Warner

16 What the Parenting Program at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women Has Meant to Me

Mary Alley, A. D., and C. S.

17 The Storybook Project at Bedford Hills

Beth Falk, June Benson, Amorel Beyor, and Alte

18 A Trilogy of Journeys

Kathy Boudin

Part Three Intimacy, Sexuality, and Gender Identity Inside

19 Untitled

Celeste “Jazz” Carrington

20 Analyzing Prison Sex: Reconciling Self-Expression with Safety

Brenda V. Smith

21 Who Said Women Can’t Get Along?

Elizabeth Leslie

22 Sorry

Tina Reynolds

23 The Chase

Holli Hampton

24 Why?: A Letter to My Lover

Sheena M. King

25 Gender, Sexuality, and Family Kinship Networks

Juanita Díaz-Cotto

26 Getting Free

Amy Stout

27 My Name Is June Martinez

Prison Environment for Transgendered Persons A Report Delivered at Sociologists for Women in Society and Transgender 102 Meeting, Philadelphia, August 2005

28 King County (WA) Gender Identity Regulations

Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention

29 Mother

Mayra Collado

30 Daddy Black Man

Cassandra Adams

31 Watershed

Kinnari Jivani

Part Four Creating and Maintaining Intellectual, Spiritual, and Creative Life Inside

32 Lit by Each Other’s Light: Women’s Writing at Cook County Jail

Anne Fowell Stanford

33 Tuesday SOUL

Kinnari Jivani

34 “I lived that book!”: Reading behind Bars

Megan Sweeney

35 Changing Minds: A Participatory Action Research Project on College in Prison

Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre, Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, Cheryl “Missy” Wilkins, Melissa Rivera, Rosemarie A. Roberts, Pamela Smart, and Debora Upegui

36 Imagining the Self and Other: Women Narrate Prison Life across Cultures

Lynne Haney, and András Tapolcai

37 My Art

Kinnari Jivani

38 My Window

Michele Molina

39 They Talked

Kinnari Jivani

40 I Never Knew

Darlene Dixon

41 Wise Women: Critical Citizenship in a Women’s Prison

Tanya Erzen

42 Women of Wisdom: An Alternative Community of Faith

Suzanne Jabro, and Kelly Kester-Smith

43 Chain of Command

Kinnari Jivani

Part Five Struggling for Health Care

44 Hep C, Pap Smears, and Basic Care: Justice Now and the Right to Family

Johanna Hoffman

45 A Dazzling Tale of Two Teeth

Tracy Lynn Hardin

46 Women’s Rights Don’t Stop at the Jailhouse Door

Rachel Roth

47 The Death of Luisa Montalvo

Nancy Stoller

48 Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities

RIPPD

49 A Plea for Rosemary

Beverly (Chopper) Henry

50 The Thing Called Love Virus

Tiffany Jackson

51 Bill of Health Rights for Incarcerated Girls

Residents of the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center

52 Working to Improve Health Care for Incarcerated Women

Sheila R. Enders

53 Women in Prison Project: Fact Sheets

Correctional Association of New York

Part Six Serving Time, Sentenced and Unsentenced

54 Reading Gender in September 11 Detentions: Zihada: The Journey from a Young Pakistani Wife to an Anthrax Suspect

Irum Shiekh

55 Victim or Criminal: The Experiences of a Human-Trafficking Survivor in the U.S. Immigration System

Leticia M. Saucedo

56 Detention of Women Asylum Seekers in the United States: A Disgrace

Marleine Bastien, and Rosta Telfort

57 “Did you see no potential in me?”: The Story of Women Serving Long Sentences in Prison

Kathy Boudin

58 Dignity Denied: The Price of Imprisoning Older Women in California

Legal Services for Prisoners with Children

59 The Longtimers/Insiders Activist Group at Tutwiler Prison for Women

Erline Bibbs

60 The Forgotten Population: A Look at Death Row in the United States through the Experiences of Women

Capital Punishment Project, Women’s Rights Project, National Prison Project, National Criminal Justice Program, and the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women

Part Seven Struggling for Rights

61 Incarcerated Young Mothers’ Bill of Rights: From a Vision to a Policy at San Francisco Juvenile Hall

Sophia Sanchez

62 Slaving in Prison: A Three-Part Indictment

D. Shawnna, and Edaleen Smith

63 Freedom Gon’ Come

Cassandra Adams

64 Reducing the Number of People in California’s Women’s Prisons: How “Gender-Responsive Prisons” Harm Women, Children, and Families

Californians United for a Responsible Budget

65 The Gender-Responsive Prison Expansion Movement

Cynthia Chandler

66 Free Battered Women

Linda Field, and Andrea Bible

67 Life’s Imprint

Michele Molina

68 Testimony of Kemba Smith before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: March 3, 2006

Rickie Solinger, Paula C. Johnson, Martha L. Raimon, Tina Reynolds, and Ruby C. Tapia

69 Keeping Families Connected: Women Organizing for Telephone Justice in the Face of Corporate-State Greed

Lauren Melodia, and Annette Warren Dickerson

70 Prick Poison

Kinnari Jivani

71 The Prison-Industrial Complex in Indigenous California

Stormy Ogden

72 A Prison Journal

Tammica Summers

Part Eight Being Out

73 A Former Battered Woman Celebrating Life After

Lorrie Sue McClary

74 Life on the Outside—of What?

Alfreda Robinson-Dawkins

75 California and the Welfare and Food Stamps Ban

All of Us or None

76 Employment Resolution: Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco

All of Us or None

77 Only with Time

Tina Reynolds

78 Child of a Convicted Felon

Anonymous

79 Mothering after Imprisonment

Margaret Oot Hayes

80 Being about It: Reflections on Advocacy after Incarceration

Martha L. Raimon, Luz Alvarez, Sunshine Brooks, Casey Deas, and Lorrayne Patterson

81 The First Time Is a Mistake…

Patricia Zimmerman

82 What Life Has Been Like for Me Since Being on the Outside

Freda Swinney

83 Alternatives: ATI in New York City

Alexandra Bell, and Leche

84 Violent Interruptions

Noelle Paley, and Joshua Price

85 Prison Abolition in Practice: The LEAD Project, the Politics of Healing, and a New Way of Life

Setsu Shigematsu, Gwen D’Arcangelis, and Melissa Burch

86 Booking It beyond the Big House

Jean Trounstine

87 Being Out of Prison

Joanne Archibald

End Matter

Contributors

Index