Interrupted Life

Interrupted Life is a gripping 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 eye-opening work brings together scores of 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's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.

Rickie Solinger is the author of Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America and Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Rose v. Wade, among other books. She is the editor of Abortion Wars (UC Press). Paula C. Johnson is Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law and the author of Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison. Attorney Martha L. Raimon has directed the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project at the Women's Prison Association and is now Senior Associate at Center for the Study of Social Policy. Tina Reynolds is Co-founder and Chair of Women on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH) and adjunct lecturer at York College/CUNY. Ruby C. Tapia is Associate Professor of Comparative Studies and Women's Studies at The Ohio State University and the author of Breeding Ghosts: Race, Death, and the Maternal in Visual Culture.

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

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
Carole E.

14. The Birthing Program in Washington State
Tabitha 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.{ths}D., and C.{ths}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

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
Ann 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 Debra 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 Longertimers/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
shawnna d.,the Fire Inside Editorial Collective, and Edaleen Smith

63. Freedom Gon' Come
Cassandra Adams

64. Reducing the Number of People in California 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

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
Contributors
Index