More than Just Words: Women's Poetry and Resistance at Cook County Jail

Documents the creative efforts of women in Cook County Jail to define themselves through words. By creating and recreating community on terms fundamentally different from those contemplated by the system, the women with whom the author worked, wrote "in a context of silence and invisibility. The writing helped foster a notion of collectivity that is antithetical to the overall system of incarceration which relies on detainees' dependence on authority to maintain control. Through words, the writers saw that the only difference between themselves and guards was "that after eight hours, you can leave". The creative writing process allowed them to understand that in a sense their lives were at stake, held hostage by the courts and by their own ignorance. (Original abstract - amended)