Ayelet Waldman - Inside This Place, Not of It - Narratives from Women’s Prisons

INSIDE THIS PLACE, NOT OF IT

Assistant editors

OONA APPEL, JOHANNA FOSTER, CLAIRE KIEFER, DANIELLE LANG, JULIET LITMAN, CAITLIN MITCHELL, SUSAN MOON, M. REBEKAH OTTO, BRIAN RUTLEDGE, WHITNEY SMITH, MARBRE STAHLY-BUTTS, TONYA YOUNG

Transcribers/drafters

ABIGAIL EDBER, SANDI GAYTAN, VANESSA ING, BRIDGET KINSELLA, THI NGUYEN, ELIZABETH SOUTTER

Additional interviewers

GILLIAN CANNON, ABIGAIL EDBER, VALENCIA HERRERA

Expert consultation and assistance

GAIL SMITH

CHICAGO LEGAL AID TO INCARCERATED MOTHERS

DEB LABELLE

ATTORNEY

TINA REYNOLDS

WOMEN ON THE RISE TELLING HERSTORY

SPARK REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

YALE LAW SCHOOL HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC

Researchers/general assistance

ALEXANDRA BRODSKY, SANDI GAYTAN, VANESSA ING, MICHELLE KNAPP, THI NGUYEN, GELYNA PRICE

Copyeditor

ORIANA LECKERT

Fact checker

ANGELENE SMITH

To the many people who shared their time and lives with us, including those whose stories we were not able to publish in this collection. And to all those people living inside whose voices are never heard.

VOICE OF WITNESS

McSWEENEYS BOOKS

SAN FRANCISCO

For more information about McSweeneys, see mcsweeneys.net

For more information about Voice of Witness, see voiceofwitness.org

Copyright 2011 McSweeneys and Voice of Witness

Front cover photo courtesy of Julia Rendleman/Reportage by Getty Images

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ISBN (eBook): 978-1-940450-53-7

VOICE OF WITNESS

Voice of Witness is a non-profit organization that uses oral history to illuminate contemporary human rights crises in the U.S. and around the world. Its book series depicts these injustices through the oral histories of the men and women who experience them. The Voice of Witness Education Program brings these stories, and the issues they reflect, into high schools and impacted communities through oral history-based curricula and holistic educator support. Visit www.voiceofwitness.org for more information.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & EXECUTIVE EDITOR: mimi lok

EDITOR: Dave Eggers

MANAGING EDITOR: Luke Gerwe

EDUCATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Cliff Mayotte

EDUCATION PROGRAM ASSOCIATE: Claire Kiefer

PUBLICITY & COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT: Alyson Sinclair

FOUNDING EDITORS

DAVE EGGERS

Co-founder, Voice of Witness; co-founder of 826

National; founder of McSweeneys Publishing LLC, and award-winning author

LOLA VOLLEN

Co-founder, Voice of Witness; founder & Executive Director, The Life After Exoneration Program

VOICE OF WITNESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MIMI LOK

Executive Director & Executive Editor, Voice of Witness

JILL STAUFFER

Assistant Professor of Philosophy; Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Concentration, Haverford College

KRISTINE LEJA

Senior Development Director, Habitat for Humanity, Greater San Francisco

RAJASVINI BHANSALI

Executive Director, International Development Exchange (IDEX)

HOLLY MUOZ

Associate Director of Gift Planning and Major Gifts, San Francisco Symphony; co-founder, Rock Star Supply Co.

CONTENTS

by Michelle Alexander

The stories in this book may haunt you, follow you like a shadow. Once you read them, you may find you can never escape them. You may find yourself awakening in the middle of the night from a dream of being shackled to a hospital bed while giving birth, prison guards whisking your baby away and denying you the right to make a phone call to share the news: my child has been born. Other stories, of abuse, medical neglect, and frightening retaliation, may stay with you long after you think youve left them behind.

At first, I found myself resisting the narratives in this collection, not wanting to deal with the reality they described. Perhaps it is natural, and thoroughly human, to recoil reflexively when one encounters extreme suffering. Perhaps it reminds us of our own vulnerability, and then fear or denial kicks in, leading us to turn away. But then a voice in my head asked me: If you find these stories difficult to read, how much harder would it be to live them? And then I realized that if I slow down enough to listen, really listen, I will find there is nothing to fear here; there is only a blessing to be found. I realized that these stories are a gift.

These are personal narratives not only of suffering, but of human dignity and survival against all the odds. Hope flickers, even through recollections of painful childhoods, poverty, and domestic and institutional abuse. It is this hope that allows us to envision a way out, a path toward a more forgiving, compassionate, and caring society, one that attempts to solve social ills and improve the lives of our most vulnerable rather than sweeping them behind bars.

Our nation is awash in punitiveness, for reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates. Most criminologists and sociologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have moved independently of each other. During the past thirty years, our nations prison population has quintupled, while crime rates have fluctuated and today are at historical lows. What explains the sudden surge of imprisonment in the United States, if not crime rates? The growth dates from the beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, and the movement to increase prison sentences and reduce the possibility of parolefor example, life sentences for third strikes. These policies had their biggest impact on communities of color, as police began sweeping ghetto communities and stopping, frisking, and searching young men, especially black men, en masse. In fact, today there are more black men under correctional controlin prison or jail, on probation or parolethan were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.