Abstract
Janet Garcia-Hallett and Geniece Crawford Mondé both explore the experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers attempting to rebuild their lives in the wake of their imprisonment. In many ways, the two books are best read together. Both authors use rich, qualitative data to explore the harms that incarceration inflicts upon already-marginalized women, and they offer incisive critiques of mothering ideologies that too often exclude structurally disadvantaged women. They also examine how these mothers adapt to, cope with, and resist the stigma that they face as formerly incarcerated women. The authors diverge from one another, however, in their theoretical contributions and analytic foci: Garcia-Hallett examines the “paradox of visibility and invisibility” that formerly incarcerated mothers of color must navigate, whereby they are barred from equal opportunities while simultaneously (formally and informally) penalized for their efforts to overcome their social marginalization. Mondé, on the other hand, invokes the work of W.E.B. DuBois (1909) to explore how formerly incarcerated mothers experience “duality at the margins”—the “metaphorical splitting of oneself into identities acceptable to mainstream society, while remaining authentic to one’s personal experiences” (Mondé, p. 6)—before, during, and after their imprisonment.
The ideologies that underpin conventional understandings of motherhood are frequently critiqued for the ways in which they perpetuate patriarchy. Garcia-Hallett rightfully notes, however, that the demands of these ideologies are particularly burdensome for mothers of color, especially those who are further marginalized by their status as formerly incarcerated women. Race, therefore, is at the center of Garcia-Hallett’s work, but she is explicitly committed to moving beyond the traditional Black/white dichotomy found in much social scientific research. Instead, she explores the intraracial experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers of African American, West Indian, and Latina background. Using interviews with 37 formerly incarcerated mothers of color, Garcia-Hallett (in chapter one) illuminates the hypersurveillance that persists in these mothers’ lives even when they are no longer confined to prison and jail cells, and she deftly explores how her participants confront questions of custody and housing (chapter two), employment and finances (chapter three), and recovery from substance abuse (chapter four), all while coping with the stressors of mothering during reentry. Each chapter calls back to Garcia-Hallett’s compelling primary argument: That the mothering efforts of formerly incarcerated women of color are rendered invisible even as their perceived failures to conform to conventional mothering expectations are excessively surveilled and punished.
Invisible Mothers demonstrates how formerly incarcerated mothers’ constructions of mothering cannot be reduced to overly simplistic categories of “good” or “bad” mothering, and that what is significant is women’s commitment to mothering—even in the face of logistical, legal, and social barriers to reunification with their children. By focusing on the experiences of women who are often erased from mothering discourses, Garcia-Hallett draws attention to the important role of community among these women: Conventional mothering ideologies position mothering as an individual pursuit of self-sacrifice that mothers alone must pursue, but Invisible Mothers reveals how formerly incarcerated mothers of color embrace the practice of “shared mothering,” whereby family members and other community members function as “Othermothers” to support biological mothers for whom gaining or maintaining custody is difficult. These findings underscore the urgency of recognizing the overlooked ways in which marginalized families and communities of color step in (and up) when institutions (at best) abandon formerly incarcerated mothers or (at worst) impede their ability to mother successfully. Ultimately, Invisible Mothers centers race in an unusually nuanced and sophisticated way by sidestepping typical Black/white analyses to instead explore how culture and ethnicity shape the experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers of color. In so doing, Garcia-Hallett highlights these mothers’ resilience and their tenacity in adapting to and/or resisting the disempowerment generated by the criminal legal system and its adjacent institutions.
This Is Our Freedom and Invisible Mothers can (and, I would argue, should) be read in tandem with one another in part because each answers questions that one might have after reading the other. For instance, in reading Garcia-Hallett’s book, readers might wonder what formerly incarcerated mothers’ lives looked like before they experienced the harms of penal oppression, and they may be curious about how reentry programs ameliorate or exacerbate the many challenges Garcia-Hallett describes. In other words, what happens before and after the snapshot of the women’s lives that Garcia-Hallett offers us? In This Is Our Freedom, Mondé addresses precisely this question by examining the life-course patterns of formerly incarcerated mothers before, during, and after their imprisonment. Using 70 interviews with formerly incarcerated women as well as focused observations in transitional housing, Mondé explores how formerly incarcerated mothers assert their maternal agency while acquiescing to social and institutional expectations surrounding motherhood. Building on DuBois’s concept of “double consciousness,” Mondé develops a “duality at the margins” framework that beautifully tackles questions of agency and structure. Using this framework, she captures the complex ways in which formerly incarcerated mothers are both victims of institutional and structural harm and moral agents capable of formulating their own perspective on what it means to be a “good” mother. (Readers interested in race and racism who choose to read This Is Our Freedom before Invisible Mothers will appreciate the former’s discussion of DuBois before they engage with the more focused discussion of race in the latter.)
The most significant contribution of This Is Our Freedom is perhaps the depth of the portrait it paints of formerly incarcerated mothers. Mondé deliberately selects a few women in her sample whose stories she returns to throughout the book with a care and compassion that highlights her participants’ humanity—a feature of the lives of the formerly incarcerated that is often glossed over when they are the subjects of social science research. Furthermore, the life-course perspective that structures This Is Our Freedom challenges rather than reproduces findings about motherhood as a positive “turning point” for women. Mondé emphasizes that motherhood does not occur in a social or personal vacuum, and she reveals the strains and traumas that led up to pregnancy and motherhood for her participants (chapter one) as well as the relationship challenges that these events triggered for the women (chapter two). In Invisible Mothers, Garcia-Hallett alludes to the “defensive othering” that formerly incarcerated mothers of color perform; Mondé delves deeper into this theme by exploring (in chapters three and four) how her participants exercised their moral agency as system-impacted mothers by casting themselves as superior to other mothers and/or by emphasizing their own personal successes as mothers (especially when institutions failed to support them adequately).
Both Invisible Mothers and This Is Our Freedom end with an unapologetic critique of the structures and policies that push formerly incarcerated mothers into the marginalized social locations they inhabit. It is not enough, the authors correctly argue, that we recognize the existence of these mothers; we must listen to them (Garcia-Hallett) and we must work “brick by brick” toward a transformative justice (Mondé, p. 143) that dismantles the policies that push structurally disadvantaged mothers to the periphery of society, where they are noticed only enough to be punished. Despite the seeming loftiness of these goals, both authors offer concrete suggestions for policy changes that would benefit formerly incarcerated mothers, from housing solutions that keep mothers and children together in the community (Garcia-Hallett) to investments in nurseries in correctional institutions and improvements in obstetric and gynecological care for incarcerated women (Mondé).
In addition to the obvious audience these books will find in scholars interested in gender and reentry issues, social scientists interested in race, racism, and critical criminology will enjoy both authors’ call for radical shifts in how we treat mothers in the criminal legal system. Read separately, both Invisible Mothers and This Is Our Freedom reflect the authors’ commitment to empirical and theoretical rigor as well as their compassion and sensitivity when studying marginalized women. Read together, these books represent welcome advancements in how we analyze the complexity of formerly incarcerated mothers’ lives.