Geniece Crawford Mondé, Ph.D. - This Is Our Freedom

"The harrowing images of overcrowded prisons and jails exists alongside the silence of the empty seat at the holiday dinner. The scale and frequency of both scenes are woven into the fabric of so-called American exceptionalism and without interrogating how the structural shapes the individual, it is difficult to understand the relationship between the experiences of formerly incarcerated women and the living legacy of mass imprisonment."

-Geniece Crawford Mondé, This is Our Freedom

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In This is Our Freedom ,Geniece Crawford Mondé examines the nuanced journeys of formerly incarcerated mothers as they begin to rebuild their lives for themselves and their children. Based on seventy in-depth interviews across three research sites, Geniece shows how women address their marginalized status in ways that center their agency and needs.

What the book reveals is that women are marginalized by their society long before the pronouncement of a judge or jury and thus develop strategies to engage with State actors before, during and after incarceration. Drawing upon an intersectional framework that finds its roots in the Du Boisian tradition of interrogating the legitimacy of those at the helm of adjudicating social worth, this work offers an incisive critique of the criminal legal system and how it has impacted the lives of millions of this country's citizenry.

To learn more about the book you can read an excerpt from the book's introduction or a long form essay based on the book's key findings.

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PRAISE FOR THIS IS OUR FREEDOM

"Geniece Crawford Mondé’s work is incredibly rich, full of the moving and devastating personal stories of the mothers in her sample. It is both an instructive text, accessible to interested people new to sociology and criminology, and a deeply scholarly work. It is full of evocative stories, methodological treats, fantastic endnotes, and varied, brilliantly coordinated references, so I was flipping back and forth the entire time (loving it) and writing all over the pages—it’s a wonder the binding still holds. "

~~Review in American Journal of Sociology by Venezia Michalsen, Southern Connecticut University

"This Is Our Freedom is an incredibly timely and important book that makes a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions about the legal system and its intrusion into family life, gender, race and ethnicity, and inequality. Mondé does an excellent job of drawing attention to the sociohistorical determinants of contemporary manifestations of inequality. Despite low levels of crime and declines in overall levels of incarceration for over a decade, the rise of state surveillance and state intervention in the lives of women and mothers animates the timeliness of the larger narrative of the book."

~~Review in Contemporary Sociology by Becky Pettit, University of Texas-Austin

"Mondé explores how formerly incarcerated mothers assert their maternal agency while acquiescing to social and institutional expectations surrounding motherhood. Building on DuBois’s concept of “double consciousness,” Mondé develops a “duality at the margins” framework that beautifully tackles questions of agency and structure. Using this framework, she captures the complex ways in which formerly incarcerated mothers are both victims of institutional and structural harm and moral agents capable of formulating their own perspective on what it means to be a “good” mother."

--Review in Gender and Society by Janani Umamamheswar, George Mason University

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"Overall, Mondé offers a unique feminist critique of how motherhood and incarceration shape women's experiences and identities, shining a light on lives that are often forgotten within criminology. Through a conceptual framework of duality at the margins, she offers a compelling extension of life course theory...Ultimately humanising these women beyond the dominant narrative of dysfunction, Mondé presents a ripe opportunity for criminology to develop life course theory and understand the complexities that exist when motherhood becomes intertwined with experiences of incarceration and marginalisation."

-- Review in Journal of Criminology by Talia Wright-Bardohl, University of Auckland

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"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. These are stories we all need to hear."

—Jerry Flores, author of Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wraparound Incarceration

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"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

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"Geniece Crawford 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

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