Invisible Mothers

Unseen Yet Hypervisible after Incarceration

Drawing on interviews conducted throughout New York City, Black feminist criminologist Janet Garcia-Hallett shares the traditionally silenced voices of formerly incarcerated mothers of color and exposes the difficult realities they face when reentering the community and navigating motherhood. Patriarchy, misogyny, and systemic racism marginalize and criminalize these mothers, pushing them into the grasp of penal control and forcing them to live in a state of disempowerment and hypersurveillance after imprisonment.

"This book is filled with the voices and understandings

of marginalized mothers,

and we come to see how their invisibility and hypervisibility

delineate their lives and their experiences as mothers after incarceration."

—Michelle Hughes Miller, coeditor of Bad Mothers

"An extremely valuable window into a particularly marginalized group,

one that is often left out of criminal justice–reform conversations.

Few books examine criminalized women's experiences with such a wide-angle lens."

—Allison McKim, author of Addicted to Rehab

"With rich, powerful narratives and analysis, Invisible Mothers

exposes the mechanisms of oppression and hypersurveillance that

produce unrelenting obstacles for formerly incarcerated

African American, West Indian, and Latina mothers."

—Hillary Potter, author of Intersectionality and Criminology