All Our Trials
Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence
by Emily L Thuma
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Pub Date 2 Mar 2019 | Archive Date 14 Feb 2019
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Description
All Our Trials explores the organizing, ideas, and influence of those who placed criminalized and marginalized women at the heart of their antiviolence mobilizations. This activism confronted a "tough on crime" political agenda and clashed with the mainstream women’s movement’s strategy of resorting to the criminal legal system as a solution to sexual and domestic violence. Drawing on extensive archival research and first-person narratives, Thuma weaves together the stories of mass defense campaigns, prisoner uprisings, broad-based local coalitions, national gatherings, and radical print cultures that cut through prison walls. In the process, she illuminates a crucial chapter in an unfinished struggle––one that continues in today’s movements against mass incarceration and in support of transformative justice.
Advance Praise
"All Our Trials offers us a robust history of late twentieth-century radical feminist antiviolence organizing. Thuma reminds us that the activism of the present is built upon an important legacy of work that traversed movements and prison walls. If we are to build an abolitionist feminist future, we would be wise to pay attention to the antiracist queer feminist politics of these activists. We owe a debt of gratitude to them for paving the way, and to Thuma for chronicling their struggles."--Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz
"All Our Trials is a tour de force. It stands among the best books on the history of modern feminist politics and represents one of the most elucidating histories of the US carceral state produced to date. Emily Thuma centers criminalized women’s ideas and organizing, providing graceful historical analysis that will undoubtedly influence current conversations about imprisonment, gender, and sexual violence. This history opens a fiercely urgent path toward an anticarceral feminist future."--Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
"With deep compassion, Thuma offers one of the most compelling historical analyses of how feminist activism of Black, queer, and criminalized women has worked to resist the long and dangerous reach of the carceral state. All Our Trials is an important text in the growing fields of critical prison studies and anti-carceral feminism and a critical addition to activist reading lists."--Beth Richie, author of Arrested Violence: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation
"All Our Trials transforms our understanding of both the history of feminism and of the carceral state. In her deeply compelling account, Thuma documents the work of activists who centered the lives of the most marginalized in their social justice imaginary and their political agenda, producing an anticarceral feminist politics and an expansive analysis of the interconnections between interpersonal and state violence. A crucial and timely read as we wrestle with gender, race, and violence today."--Regina Kunzel, author of Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780252084126 |
| PRICE | US$24.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 248 |
Links
Featured Reviews
Mariah N, Reviewer
I'd like to thank Netgalley and the University of Illinois Press for giving me an ARC of All Our Trials.
For starters, there are some trigger warnings in this book, including, but not limited to: sexual assault, and brutality (domestic and police). All Our Trials is essentially a history of modern feminist anti-violence and anticarceral movements within the United States. This book covers a lot of ground, but it is incredibly important material. Emily Thuma details the incredible importance of intersectional feminism and through this book shows the triumphs that women can accomplish when we choose to stand together fighting for and with those whom colonial systems have tried to strip voices from. I would encourage anyone to read this book.
Megan B, Reviewer
Emily Thuma's All Our Trials details the history of activism for and by women in prison. It's a very inclusive study, focusing intensely on marginalized women, including women of color and queer women. It's very thorough, detailed, and covers a lot of information without feeling info-dumping or feeling extremely dry. This book importantly takes on how women have fought for their own rights while in prison or for other women in prison, and it doesn't shy away from the conflicts between women who should have been on the same side. Thuma's writing never feels detached and packs a lot of emotional punch.
Tonstant W, Reviewer
All Our Trials is a history of how the women’s anti-violence, anti-racism, feminism, and prison abolition came together in recognition of how these struggles are interdependent. Examples abound of women who have been sentenced to prison for defending themselves from rape and domestic violence. The story of two African American women, Joan Little and Cece McDonald bracket the book, Joan Little killed a prison guard who was raping her. McDonald shot into the ceiling to scare off her abusive ex. Both women were convicted and both have won release through activism demanding justice. On one hand, the power of organizing is demonstrated by their release. On the other hand, half a century separate their cases…and the same biases prevail.
I remember when I was in college, a local woman whose abusive husband kept her shackled to a ropeline to keep her from leaving their farm was convicted when she killed him. It was such an unspeakable injustice and All Our Trials is rife with injustices and the women and organizations in the struggle to right those wrongs.
Because prison and the criminal justice system is the purveyor of so much injustice, feminist anti-rape and domestic violence organizers are reluctant to look to the criminal justice system for help. Incarcerating more people in a system of violence is not the answer to violence. This has been a nexus of coalition-building and opportunity as well as division as many white feminists did not see the connection.
All Our Trials successfully connects contemporary anti-violence and anti-carceral organizing to the struggles of the Seventies. There is a through-line that connects generations of organizing. That is both empowering and discouraging as our nation has embraced locking people up as a solution for every social problem, including mental illness and student disruption. The carceral state remains a force of oppression. Rape and domestic violence also seem unimpeded, with an abuser in the White House. Nonetheless, no one has given up and the work continues – work that will be well-informed by this book.
I received an e-galley of All Our Trials from the publisher through NetGalley.
All Our Trials at University of Illinois Press
Emily L. Thuma faculty page
Media/Journalist 522898
This is a needed book on gender, looking at feminism and women's involvement in radical politics during a relatively recent period of history, and using a variety of archival material, both print and visual. It's a welcome contribution to the history of marginalised sections of society, and will be a useful book for anyone interested in women's roles in politics and the criminal justice system.
