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pregnant women in prison

Bibliobitch: "Inside this Place Not Of It" Goes Inside Women's Prisons

Books post by Kjerstin Johnson, Submitted by Kjerstin Johnson on October 13, 2011 - 1:30pm; tagged nonfiction, oral history, pregnant women in prison, prison, women in prison.

the cover of Inside This Place Not Of It. It features a scene from prison, five black women wearing white jumpsuits and orange hats. The stand single file and face a white female office in a blue uniform. Even though they are standing in subordination, there is dignity in the way they hold themselves.

Inside This Place, Not of It: Stories from Women’s Prisons is the ninth book in the Voice of Witness series, which carries the Studs Turkel torch by using oral history to share stories from the margins of America. Inside This Place has thirteen accounts from people who have been—and several who remain—incarcerated in women’s prisons. Editors Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman and a team of nineteen interviewers conducted over seventy interviews with thirty individuals over the course of ten months.

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Race Card: Why Are Pregnant Migrant Women in Arizona Being Shackled?

Social Commentary post by Nadra Kareem Nittle, Submitted by Nadra Kareem Nittle on February 4, 2010 - 9:00am; tagged Arizona, pregnant women in prison, race card, undocumented immigrants.

Last year authorities arrested expectant mother Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant, and charged her with using someone else’s identity to work. After the incarcerated Mendiola-Martinez delivered a baby boy Dec. 21 via C-section at Maricopa Medical Center in Arizona, she was shackled for two days to her hospital bed and not allowed to nurse her baby, New America Media (NAM) reports. Moreover, when guards escorted her out of the hospital in shackles, no one told her the whereabouts of her son.

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