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9780252037146 Academic Inspection Copy

The Story Within Us

Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading
  • ISBN-13: 9780252037146
  • Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
    Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
  • Edited by Megan Sweeney
  • Price: AUD $239.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/11/2012
  • Format: Hardback 288 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Crime & criminology [JKV]
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This volume features in-depth, oral interviews with eleven incarcerated women, each of whom offers a narrative of her life and her reading experiences within prison walls. The women share powerful stories about their complex and diverse efforts to negotiate difficult relationships, exercise agency in restrictive circumstances, and find meaning and beauty in the midst of pain. Their shared emphases on abuse, poverty, addiction, and mental illness illuminate the pathways that lead many women to prison and suggest possibilities for addressing the profound social problems that fuel crime. Framing the narratives within an analytic introduction and reflective afterword, Megan Sweeney highlights the crucial intellectual work that the incarcerated women perform despite myriad restrictions on reading and education in U.S. prisons. These women use the limited reading materials available to them as sources of guidance and support and as tools for self-reflection and self-education. Through their creative engagements with books, the women learn to reframe their own life stories, situate their experiences in relation to broader social patterns, deepen their understanding of others, experiment with new ways of being, and maintain a sense of connection with their fellow citizens on both sides of the prison fence.
''A powerful addition to prison literature that will interest scholars of feminist criminology, prison studies, English, women's studies, sociology, and ethnic studies. While other anthologies feature the narratives of incarcerated women, this book is unique in that it includes rich narratives in which women describe what reading and books mean to them.'' Jodie Michelle Lawston, co-editor of Razor Wire Women: Prisoners, Activists, Scholars, and Artists
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