Interrupted Life - by Rickie Solinger & Paula C Johnson & Martha L Raimon & Tina Reynolds & Ruby Tapia (Paperback)

About the Book

"Striking, original, and stimulating. Even readers with extensive familiarity of the literature regarding women in prison will learn something new."--Mona Danner, PhD Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"An important new collection of essays."--Lee Wengraf "Intl Socialist Review" (8/4/2010 12:00:00 AM)

"Offers an insightful picture of [a] typically forgotten group."-- "Law & Politics Book Review" (11/9/2010 12:00:00 AM)

"This book is a powerful and impassioned exposition of the realities for incarcerated women."--Ruth Wyner "Howard Journal Of Criminal Justice" (9/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

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.