Mothering behind bars: how addiction, recovery, and incarceration affect mothering

Abstract

The goal of this project is to create a collaborative essay focusing on the experiences of mothering, addiction, and recovery that incarcerated women face. Too often imprisoned women are ignored or criticized, relegated to an untenable space as a statistic or an unnamed casualty (Enos, 2000; Solinger et al, 2010; Haney, 2010; Jacobi and Stanford, 2014). The essay will be co-authored by three women who co-facilitate writing workshops through the Community Literacy Center at a county jail and four women who are held at the jail. This core group will offer their own views, their own definitions of addiction, their own experiences with mothering, and what these terms mean to them. The group will begin with stories, stories that unfold through their essay and that have been published in the SpeakOut journals that emerge twice annually across more than a decade of dedicated writing workshops. The writers are committed to collaborative authorship and will use a range of participatory methods to invite imprisoned mothers to co-author this story. They will distribute a call for contributions in the housing unit and invite the lead co-authors to engage in both reflection and autoethnographic/lifewriting. As a team the writers will review selected published poems and writing from the Speak/Out Journal in order to understand the breadth of experience that women have chosen to document. This essay will not only offer up those voices, but will actively engage currently incarcerated women in the shaping and crafting of the writing and perspectives the writers offer.