Mothers in Prison

This book, which is based on seven interviews conducted in a Texas womens prison, focuses on stories told by a few of the growing number of mothers incarcerated in American prisons. Incarcerated mothers stories deal with the challenges of motherhood before, during, and after incarceration, offering a nuanced picture of social and psychological contexts that surround disadvantaged mothers with unrealistic social norms. The sum of these womens experiences-material and psychological-adds up to a counter-narrative critiquing the dominant cultures ideas of what mothers "should be" and how the system fails to provide opportunities to disadvantaged parents. This study analyzes the rhetorical strategies of incarcerated mothers to determine what strategies silenced groups utilize in the development of counter-narratives.