Women, Writing and Prison is a dangerous book. As one imprisoned writer, Boudicca Burning, puts it, “I write to tell my story in hopes that I move people to feel compassion” (Burning 219). Throughout this book there is an undercurrent of compassion, emotional appeals for the plight of the prisoner. This anthology, edited by Tobi Jacobi and Ann Folwell Stanford, challenges societal and cultural assumptions about prisoners and prison life. As Stanford writes in the Introduction, “with the act of putting pen to paper, each writer defies and remakes the social constructions that have been made for her” (8). Women, Writing and Prison provides a multifaceted approach to prison writing, with selections from imprisoned and formerly imprisoned writers, as well as pieces by community activists and scholars who study prison writing. Even in terms of style, the book is multifaceted, with the stirring imagery of verse interspersed between narrative essays that at times straddle the border between fiction and nonfiction, life inside and life outside prison walls.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric