Available From UC Press

For the overwhelming majority of women leaving correctional institutions in the United States, there is one aspect of their identity that informs their needs, opportunities, hopes, and dreams: their roles as mothers. This Is Our Freedom provides an intimate and moving portrait of women’s journeys prior to and after incarceration. In interviews with seventy formerly incarcerated mothers, Geniece Crawford Mondé captures how women reframe their marginalized identity and place themselves at the center of their own stories. With incisive analysis, Mondé reveals the complex ways that motherhood shapes post-incarceration life, while highlighting how the lasting legacy of mass incarceration continues to impact society’s most vulnerable members.

"A deeply insightful, thoughtful, and rigorous look into the lives of incarcerated mothers. Geniece Mondé finds that incarceration for mothers, especially black mothers and women of color, is a lifelong process and not one that ends once they leave the walls of their respective detention centers. This is a must-read text for anyone interested in the experiences of incarcerated women or women placed at risk. It uncovers the gendered, racialized, and socioeconomic challenges these women face and how motherhood complicates these challenges further. These are heart-wrenching stories, as well as tales of hope and determination. They are ones we all need to hear."—Jerry Flores, author of Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wraparound Incarceration

"Mondé's nuanced and compelling study of mothers offers a much-needed expansion of life-course theory, one that considers the fluidity of motherhood and its impact on how women navigate the pathways available to them after they leave penal facilities."—Anna Curtis, author of Dangerous Masculinity: Fatherhood, Race, and Security inside America's Prisons 

"This Is Our Freedom is a compelling, compassionate account of the complexities of motherhood for women who have been incarcerated and of their negotiation of ‘duality at the margins,’ balancing agency and acquiescence. Mondé details the women’s lives and perspectives in their own words and in their messy and complicated totality."—Andrea Leverentz, author of Intersecting Lives: How Place Shapes Reentry