Herstory: Giving a voice to the incarcerated
Artwork courtesy of Gwynne Duncan/Herstory
“I hope I have been part of the solution,” wrote Barbara Allan, founder of Prison Families Anonymous and a trailblazing advocate for prison families, as she concluded her revolutionary book “Doing Our Time on the Outside: One Prison Family of 2.5 Million.” Allan’s thoughts on her journey as an activist and as a family member impacted by incarceration had been “inside [her] head and heart for many years,” she wrote. She credits one organization for helping her put her journey into words: Herstory Writers Workshop.
Herstory Writers, a non-profit founded by Erika Duncan, is dedicated to sharing stories of a myriad of human experiences designed to impact hearts and minds and change policies. Over decades, their work has reached audiences across the country and crossed countless social barriers.
By giving individuals a respectful platform to share their stories, Herstory has brought communities together, raised awareness and inspiration and furthered social activism through storytelling. Herstory is able to reach such a diverse audience through their multifaceted leadership style, with former workshop members leading current programs in efforts to bring stories from all walks of life together, bonded by the most raw moments of humanity.
Allan’s legacy as an activist continues through the Herstory project named after her book: “Doing Our Time on the Outside: Prison Family and Reentry Voices For a Change.” This project brought together formerly incarcerated individuals, people who have incarcerated loved ones and undergraduate criminology students, to write as a community and learn from one another.
Additionally, participating criminology students met outside of these meetings in their own workshop, where they discussed their developing sense of activism through the lens of short stories from the Herstory Hofstra Archive.
Herstory’s Hofstra Archive is a rich virtual resource that contains over 30 stories written over the years by workshop participants. Nestled within Hofstra’s online Special Collections through Axinn Library, students, professors and community members can read powerful short stories and memoir excerpts. This resource served as a springboard for the Hofstra undergraduate criminology interns.
A small cohort of students, selected from the Hofstra criminology program, worked throughout the semester with Victoria Roberts and Shahrzad Sajadi exploring firsthand stories from individuals involved in the prison system in this country. The students have participated in two weekly meetings: one that emphasized effective storytelling and activism through writing with those directly impacted by incarceration and one focused on analyzing prior Herstory writings in the context of mass incarceration.
Over the course of their spring semester, they read, discussed and wrote about several Herstory works that explore incarceration through the lens of the individuals it has most deeply impacted. Exploring topics such as motherhood, mental health, race and trauma, the Hofstra interns learned from the Herstory participants that came before them who, in turn, would inform their own writing.
The journey was not always easy and was often frustrating. Learning about the complex constellation of carceral harm is infuriating and emotionally taxing. Nevertheless, it is necessary work, and it is this work that ultimately fuels the interns’ journeys as criminology activists.
Discussing Dathonie Pinto’s short story “Chains Don’t Rattle Themselves,” senior criminology major Serena Roy wrote, “It is stories like Dathonie’s, where law enforcement has failed, yet again, to provide any sort of assistance to those actually in need, that prove how profoundly flawed the American justice system is ... It is stories like hers that leave me furious and frustrated. It is the stories I have heard during the Herstory workshop that further prove to me that change needs to happen, and I hope I can be a part of that.”
While the semester and the workshops are winding down, Herstory and the Hofstra interns’ work is far from over. The students’ reflections have culminated in finalized pieces where they have formalized their goals as criminological activists with the resources they have gained through Herstory this semester.
From here, they will put their learning into action, both in their immediate communities and in a greater context, using skills and knowledge from the workshops to make a concrete impact.
The QR code is below if you want to read about their experience with Herstory and how it has shaped their journey as criminologists. The works that Herstory Hofstra Archive has to offer are powerful, important and necessary.
