Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.52 AVERAGE
4.52 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Thank you to the author and everyone who has worked to bring this history to light. I knew Angela Davis had been incarcerated in the Women's House of Detention from reading her autobiography, but otherwise I knew very little of its story. This is crucial history.
Ryan examines the history of both queerness and the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village, and how they overlap, intertwine, and ultimately feed off of each other. Using specific case studies, Ryan uses the House of D to exemplify a wider look at queerness existing inside the prison industrial complex and the desperate need for not only prison abolition, but the community care and support that comes with it.
Prologue:
Calls for prison reform ignore the reality that an institution, grounded in the commodification of human beings through torture and the deprivation of their liberty cannot be made good. Cages confine people, not the conditions that facilitated their harms or the mentalities that perpetuate violence.
Chapter 1:
The history of women’s incarceration is not simply a small mirror held up to the incarceration of men. Rather, it is about the development of a distinctly unjust system of justice, violently dedicated to the maintenance of proper femineity.
Chapter 6:
But across the board, these first flickers of pride can probably best be understood in terms of the radical black activist tradition of freedom dreams, communal coming to understandings of life as it could be lived outside the oppressive forces of white supremacist patriarchy. “Freedom dreams are born when we face hard conditions not with despair, but with the knowledge that these can change.” Crucially, however, these dreams are communal, they cannot come to be in isolation.
Chapter 11:
Our refusal to see prisons as sites of queer culture goes hand in hand with our refusal to see these queer and/or chosen families as legitimate and our obsession with a limited idea of sexual orientation as the sole, permanent inborn determiner of our attractions.
Prologue:
Calls for prison reform ignore the reality that an institution, grounded in the commodification of human beings through torture and the deprivation of their liberty cannot be made good. Cages confine people, not the conditions that facilitated their harms or the mentalities that perpetuate violence.
Chapter 1:
The history of women’s incarceration is not simply a small mirror held up to the incarceration of men. Rather, it is about the development of a distinctly unjust system of justice, violently dedicated to the maintenance of proper femineity.
Chapter 6:
But across the board, these first flickers of pride can probably best be understood in terms of the radical black activist tradition of freedom dreams, communal coming to understandings of life as it could be lived outside the oppressive forces of white supremacist patriarchy. “Freedom dreams are born when we face hard conditions not with despair, but with the knowledge that these can change.” Crucially, however, these dreams are communal, they cannot come to be in isolation.
Chapter 11:
Our refusal to see prisons as sites of queer culture goes hand in hand with our refusal to see these queer and/or chosen families as legitimate and our obsession with a limited idea of sexual orientation as the sole, permanent inborn determiner of our attractions.
Learned so much from this book that I didn't know before. This book is not just about incarceration but an excellent read to get an inside glimpse at housing, social service, and women/queer legal rights until the modern day. I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a gay anticapitalist read. One of my first queer history reads, not so much a hard technical one, but does well connecting personal cases and political context of the time. Ryan does a great job emphasizing class and race as critical factors in gay existence. Definitely worth the read.
informative
sad
slow-paced
Incredibly informative. Every bit of our queer history that's not lost to time is a gift.
That being said, the structure and form of this wasn't outstanding. The writing wasn't particularly impactful or beautiful.
The special part of Women's House of Detention is our history and our elders honoured.
That being said, the structure and form of this wasn't outstanding. The writing wasn't particularly impactful or beautiful.
The special part of Women's House of Detention is our history and our elders honoured.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Homophobia, Medical trauma, Lesbophobia
Moderate: Drug use, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Violence, Police brutality, Medical content, Classism
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
I cannot recommend this book enough. It is one of the most person-centered history books I’ve ever read and just so well done. It also does a great job of relating the events highlighted in the book to other more “well-known” events at the same time to show how queer people of color are systematically erased from history—even queer histories.
informative
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Required reading on the importance of understanding our roots and cross-identity struggle.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Sexual assault, Transphobia
Moderate: Homophobia, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Lesbophobia