NBWJI Book Club Announcement: Arrested Justice
We recently put together a reading list of books by Black women that highlight the real impact of incarceration on Black women and girls.
There’s so much to learn, and it can be hard to know where to start. We have a suggestion: Read and learn along with us in our NBWJI Book Club. It’s really simple with no pressure.
We choose one book every couple of months. You read at your own pace.
We share guiding questions about once a week for you to think about as you read.
As we finish the book, we share some of the key takeaways and where we can all take further action.
We sit down with the author to discuss the book, learn what inspires her work, and consider together how we translate our new knowledge into healing-centered justice.
The first book is Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation by Dr. Beth E. Richie, head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago.
NBWJI Executive Director Sydney McKinney spoke with Dr. Ritchie about why society criminalizes Black women instead of protecting us from violence and harm.
About the book
Black women in marginalized communities are uniquely at risk of battering, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and incest. Through the compelling stories of Black women who have been most affected by racism, persistent poverty, class inequality, limited access to support resources or institutions, Beth E. Richie shows that the threat of violence to Black women has never been more serious, demonstrating how conservative legal, social, political and economic policies have impacted activism in the US-based movement to end violence against women. Richie argues that Black women face particular peril because of the ways that race and culture have not figured centrally enough in the analysis of the causes and consequences of gender violence. As a result, the extent of physical, sexual and other forms of violence in the lives of Black women, the various forms it takes, and the contexts within which it occurs are minimized--at best—and frequently ignored.
We hope you’ll join us.