In this volume of Critical Storytelling , female incarcerates and undergraduate writers share insights from their liminality of living with/from behind/within invisible bars, posing important questions about how to incite change for the future.

"Freedom Inside? offers a combination of personal narrative and scholarly research in order to examine the role of yoga and meditation in U.S. prisons. It offers a glimpse inside the system now known as mass incarceration, which disproportionately punishes, confines, and controls those from black, brown and/or poor communities at exponentially higher rates, diminishing their life-chances and creating a vast underclass of disempowered, subordinated citizens. How do self-disciplinary practices such as yoga and meditation work when they are taught inside unjust systems? Do they produce political passivity, quietism, and compliance, if offered as palliatives to accept, cope and comply with unjust power structures? Or, might they prove disruptive to mass incarceration, if offered as tools to develop awareness and attunement toward injustice, to engage in non-conformist responses that include critique and challenge? The book explores both the promises and pitfalls of yoga and meditation when taught in prisons in different ways. It is based on four years of immersion in prisons and prison volunteer communities, along with ethnographic work inside a detention facility, and many in-depth interviews with those who teach and practice inside prisons. It interweaves academic narratives with personal experiences of collaboration with volunteers and incarcerated practitioners"--

"Critical stories are narratives that recount the writer's experiences, situating those experiences in broader cultural contexts. In this volume of Critical Storytelling, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed peoples share insights from their liminality to help readers learn from their perspectives on living from behind invisible bars. Female inmates at Decatur's Correctional Center and the undergraduate Millikin University students who worked with them come together to give voice to their specific histories of living from behind invisibile bars and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Specifically, the voices in this volume seek to expose, analyze, and challenge deeply-entrenched narratives and characterizations of incarcerated women, whose histories are often marked by sexual abuse, domestic violence, poverty, PTSD, a lack of education, housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance addiction. These silenced female inmate voices need to be heard and contextualized within the larger metanarrative of prison literature. Through telling critical stories, these writers attempt to: sustain recovery from trauma, make positive changes and informed decisions, create a real sense of empowerment, strengthen their capacity to exercise personal agency, and inspire audiences to create change far outside the reaches of physical and metaphorical bars. Contributors are: Anonymous, Soren Belle, Megan Batty, Dwight G. Brown, Jr., Sandra Brown, Kathryn Coffey, Kelly Cunningham, Paiten Hamilton, Kathlyn J. Housh, Rebekah Icenesse, Kala Keller, Jelisa Lovette, Bric Martin, Amanda Minetti, Laura Nearing, Angie Oaks, Claire Prendergast, Cara Quiett, J. M. Spence, Noah Villarreal and Alisha Walker"--

Women’s incarceration is on the rise globally and this has significant intergenerational, economic and humanitarian costs for communities across the world. While there have been efforts to implement reform, particularly in countries such as Canada, UK, US and Australia, the growing evidence suggests women’s prisons and the support structures surrounding them are in crisis. This collection of critical essays presents groundbreaking research on women’s post-imprisonment policy, practice and experiences. It is the first collection to offer international perspectives on gender, criminalisation, the effects of imprisonment and women-centred approaches to the short and long-term support of women exiting prison. It offers cutting-edge insights into contemporary policy developments and women’s experiences across the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and Northern Ireland. The collection makes two important contributions. First, it marks a departure from an instrumental and individual focus on ‘what works’ to reduce women’s offending and re-offending behaviour - a prevailing approach within competing collections focused on post-release issues. Second, it presents critical, original research with robust empirical foundations to revive feminist criminological engagement around gender, imprisonment, and most critically, post-release management, support and survival. The collection will appeal to academics and community-based advocates, activists, lawyers and practitioners engaged in advocacy and service provision for imprisoned women. It is also an important and unique analysis for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying criminological and social science courses particularly those related to gender and crime, imprisonment and correctional policy and qualitative research methods.

Invisible Ink is a helpful, accessible guide to the essential elements of the best storytelling by award-winning writer/director/producer Brian McDonald. Readers learn techniques for building a compelling story around a theme, engaging audiences with writing, creating appealing characters, and much more.

Critical Storytelling in Urban Education shares poems and stories written by college students attending Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The poets and storytellers in this gripping volume address challenges they have faced: issues of sexual abuse, racial politics, cultural identity, stigmatization of marginalized communities, immigration, and other forms of struggle within and outside of urban educational settings. They are students in Education, Communication Studies, Business, and English, among other disciplines. Academic writing has been frequently reserved to professors and doctoral students. This collection is different in that the writing of undergraduate and master students is featured. In a world of unrest, strife, and division, critical stories are sacrosanct.

Critical Storytelling in 2020: Issues, Elections, and Beyond embraces the fierce urgency of the year 2020. This collection features timely research, critical stories, and engaging poetry written by undergraduate students, Master’s and Ph.D. students, recently-graduated students, and faculty. The authors hail from fields of Communication Studies, Education, Journalism, Media Arts & Studies, Creative Writing, Criminal Justice, Law, and Business/Organizational Communication. For those that share personal narratives and poems, we are drawn to witness how the personal is often political and the individual is often collective. For those that share more social-scientific papers (literature reviews, some with narrative sections), we are drawn to witness how the political is often personal and the collective is often individual. The year 2020 clearly is a year that highlights our complex reality of politics, personal and collective issues, and futures influenced by the present. This volume, in both direct and deviant ways, speaks to issues of pivotal import in the U.S. in a year that will see a crucial census, a historic election, and the momentous, yet-to-be-seen movement birthed from contested change and courageous critical storytellers. The authors herein dare to share their voices in written form and bravely offer their perspectives to us—their stories ring out beyond the written page. Contributors are: Bowen Dong, Aurora Gross, Nicholas D. Hartlep, Brandon O. Hensley, Phelan Johnson, Miles Kinsman, Karen Chava Knox, Sarah Kominek, Emmitt Lewis, Sarita McKenney, Kelsey Mesmer, Taylor Nondorf, Julie M. Novak, Christopher Saleh, Daniel Socha, Ashley Teffer, and Kimberly Tracey.