Vision

When reading “Prisoners of a Hard Life” (PHL) I felt outraged. The level of mistreatment, the utter waste, and the general lack of compassion these women faced (and still face) shocked and frustrated me. I couldn’t understand how people like Denise could be treated the way they were. I followed up the PHL reading with Colored Amazons, however, and began to feel a change of heart. As I read, I couldn’t stop thinking I was missing something or wasn’t getting the full picture. Though, like PHL, many of the stories in Colored Amazons frustrated and angered me – Alice Clifton’s story, for example – I kept feeling as though the stories were commending the actions of the prisoners, and that made me uncomfortable.

My avatar is a Hannah Hoch image, a close-up from one of her larger works.  I chose it for somewhat obvious reasons, as it depicts the face of a woman with an open mouth with text, specifically the letters ABCD, between her teeth.  In addition to being visually interesting and being an image from one of my favorite artists, I thought the themes of voice and collage in the piece related quite nicely to our 360.

I've been on Serendip since I've been in Jody's E-Sem and I can probably count the number of times I've changed my avatar on one hand. The current picture I have as my avatar is a candid picture of me sitting on a rock and gazing in the distance (I swear, totally not on purpose) while I was visiting Monument Valley in the Navajo Nation. I try not to pick photos where you can clearly see me, and I think I do that because I feel uncomfortable when the attention and focus is on me. The trip to Monument Valley was part of a summer program I was participating in during the summer before my senior year of high school started. I got to learn about Southwestern culture as well as the Navajo people and their interesting but often overlooked culture. That trip made such an everlasting impact on me and further helped me realize my passion for social justice and I definitely plan to go back and visit one day.

The story of Alice Clifton was hard for me to read.  I felt myself physically squirm at both the graphic descriptions (of cutting the child’s throat) and knowing the absolute lack of control Alice Clifton had over her life and the life of her child.  It is not clear whether or not she wanted to keep that baby, but it does seem the Shaffer (the father) may have persuaded her to kill the child or make it look as though she did.  It seemed bizarre how little Shaffer is involved in the trial, but of course as I continued reading I learned that crimes against black woman, even as severe as rape, were not acknowledged.  Gross writes “Clifton sought to escape slavery by slashing her infant’s throat and as a consequence found herself tried by a justice system that allowed for her enslavement even as it dismantled slavery for other blacks” (page 26).  Even though slavery was being dismantled, had the child lived, I doubt he or she would have had a happy life given how long and slow the process was (is? we might not have slavery, but racism is alive and well...look how many schools are segregated...).

In thinking about this, I wonder how much things have changed in terms of women having control over their own bodies.  My first reaction is that I feel there is no comparison to the lack of rights Alice Clifton had as a black domestic servant in the late 1700s, and that we are much better off today.  But is that true? Is it ludicrous to even ask?

I chose to use this picture as my avatar because it's a photo I took while in New Zealand this summer visiting family. The fern is so common in native forests there that I can't help thinking of my family when I see them. I also really relate to this photo because the fern is actually hanging over a waterfall. In many ways, I feel like that's a great analogy for the risktaking we do in class and every day of our lives. 

Copied from an email that I sent to Barb this morning about my avatar:

With regards to my avatar: (http://arrestedmotion.com/2011/11/releases-joe-sorren-x-ingrid-michaelson-human-again-album-cover-and-print/) 
I really like this image--it is from the album cover of a recent album by Ingrid Michaelson, one of my favorite artists, so I feel connected to it in that way. Not only that, but I feel connected to the girl in the picture--she is small in comparison to her surroundings, almost swallowed up by them, looking at them and trying to understand, trying to connect with something. In my mind, these surroundings are water, and the girl in the image is merely dipping her toes in, although it is all around her. I often feel this way about academia, about issues of social justice--I have a lot of curiosity and hunger to understand everything around me, and the comments and feelings and experiences of others, but I've only just scratched the surface. I think it's important to keep this sense of not knowing, especially in a class like this where there is so much that is subjective, and in the rest of my life, because what has more ambiguity and such multitude of possible choices than that?

Though "Prisoners of a Hard Life" shared various statistics and facts about incarcerated women, it was not the numbers nor the narratives but the images, particularly the faces and bodies of the women, on which I want to comment.  The graphic-novel style of work adds a dimension to the stories of these five women that I'm not used to seeing.  In grayscale, the women come to life and, were I able to take the figures out of the harsh words of the pages and environments of the panel, it would be easy enough to insert them into a children's book--as just another illustration of a woman.  In this, I think the authors allow the reader to see the humanity of women who are used to being seen as criminals first and women and mothers as a distant second and third.  The ink drawings make it easier to notice similarities between people instead of focusing on differences like race or class indicators like style of dress.  The stories of these five women are each unique, but, through the medium of the graphic novel, more so than the photographs or other outside images that are included, it is easy to recognize that the women in the panels are more than their childhoods, their crimes, their addictions, their race, their poverty, or any other factors I may have previously focused on to define them. 

One of the themes that weeds through all our classes is the notion of choice. We choose to be silent; we choose to have a voice; we choose to live the kind of lives that we do. After reading "Prisoners of a Hard Life" I find myself really annoyed at how the notion of choice, despite how much people want it to have a positive spin, is ultimately used against us: somtimes by others and sometimes by ourselves . When we talk about incarcerated women, in particular, the idea of choice has really had negative consequences on how they are viewed in society. Incarcerated women: choose to be criminals, choose to drop of school and a consequence choose to work in below mininum wage jobs, choose to be teen mothers, choose to have their children taken away from them, choose to be involved in abusive relationships. Both my education and life experiences have taught me that the freedom of choice only goes so far. To argue that the individual chooses to live a life of poverty and shame is a gross failure to see the mutiple array of physical and metaphorical road blocks that women of all walks of life must face before making a decision about the road they must take to better themselves and their lives.

Each of our texts this week provides powerful anecdotes and statistics regarding the history of women in the American justice system. I was particularly taken by the story of Alice Clifton, the slave tried for murder of her own child. To connect her story back to the similar story of Regina McKnight presented in “Prisoners of a Hard Life (The Real Cost of Prison Project)” was particularly heartbreaking. How long has this injustice been going on? How long will it continue?