Description
Book SynopsisLiteracy Experiences of Formerly Incarcerated Women: Sentences and Sponsors focuses on a narrative research study of the literacy experiences of formerly incarcerated women and how these experiences have affected their lives, both while incarcerated and while transitioning back into society. Using Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship (1998), Melanie N. Burdick explores the mass incarceration of women, and their access to literacy and higher education while incarcerated, as feminist and social justice issues. Although discussions of reading and writing as a part of correctional education are often romanticized, offering views of incarcerated people who become enlightened and reformed, Burdick identifies these romanticizes views and criticizes their controlling and harmful effects. This book shines a light on the personal and political ramifications of literacy experiences in women’s lives as they grow up in families and schools, move through the prison system, and transition back into society and higher education, arguing that literacy is politically situated and that transitioning out of prison is a complex process marked by literate acts that are dependent upon literacy sponsorship.
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I
Chapter 1Stories and Sponsors: Narrative Inquiry and Literacy Sponsorship of Formerly Incarcerated Women
Chapter 2Literacies of Transitioning, Power, and Owning the Story
Chapter 3“Because Our World is Very Small”: Prison Libraries and Librarians
Chapter 4Mothering Through Literate Acts: Facebook, Texts, and the “Happiest Thing Ever”
Chapter 5Three Dimensional Landscapes of Formerly Incarcerated Women’s Literacy Narratives
Part II
Chapter 6 Listening to Diane: One Woman’s Prison to School Pipeline
Chapter 7 Narrating and Owning a College Student Identity
Chapter 8 From Finding an Academic Home to “Feeling Untethered”
Chapter 9 Opening the Gates: Narratives from Diane’s Professors
Chapter 10 Seeing Through the Sentences and Into the Stories
Bibliography
About the Author
