Voices from the Inside

Voices from the Inside traces how incarcerated women and trans and nonbinary individuals in California use writing as a form of organizing, survival, and political analysis. Exploring the dynamics of agency and voice in incarcerated women’s communicative lives and their strategies of resistance, survival, and resilience, this account brings an abolition-feminist lens to our understanding of the gendered harms of incarceration. Importantly, it develops a theory of incarcerated women’s public sphere as an organized space of critical resistance and advocacy which, in turn, plays a key role in shaping legal doctrine and policy reform debates. Painting a richly textured portrait of incarcerated women as change agents, this powerful account of oppression and resistance behind bars offers a blueprint for activists on the inside and outside alike.