Description

Social Justice and Feminist Activism: Writing as an Instrument of Collective Reflection in Prison Spaces

The author describes her experience working as an academic and activist in penitentiary spaces in Mexico, with indigenous and mestiza women who are victims of a penal state that criminalizes poverty and social protest. With the purpose of cultivating ethnographic intimacy within penitentiary space, the author worked in what is locally known as the Female CERESO of Atlacholoaya, documenting the life histories of the indigenous female prisoners in this center. What began as a writing workshop ended up as the editorial project Sisters in the Shadows Editorial Collective of Women in Prison (Colectiva Editorial de Mujeres en Prisión Hermanas en la Sombra), which has so far published eight books and a number of articles for magazines on culture and prison; these accounts have influenced revisions of judicial inquiries and the liberation of a number of women who had been unjustly imprisoned.

penal state, Mexico, indigenous females, writing workshop

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 42, Nos. 3-4 (2015): 155-169