Isis’ Justice: Re-membering Incarcerated Youth and the Urgency of Abolition

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Reflecting upon what is needed to re-member colonized peoples and communities, former political prisoner, educator, and abolitionist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2009) returns to the Egyptian story of Isis’ re-membering of Osiris. Considering why this story has been so highly regarded by freedom fighters, wa Thiong’o argues that the story carries important lessons that are often missed in anti-colonial, abolitionist efforts to work toward the wholeness of peoples, lands, and communities: how becoming something new comes from understanding what existed before and repairing what was torn, and more, how wholeness is about honoring what was, what was torn, and what is new. This symposium gathers five scholars who come together to re-member incarcerated youth with this vision of a just wholeness.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Casey Philip Wong, Georgia State University

Papers

• “I Like Flowers, That’s My Thing”: Identity Formation in a Carceral-Figured World - Julissa O. Muñiz, University of California - Los Angeles

• Seeing, They Do Not See: Reexamining Our Responsibility to People Incarcerated as Youth - Casey Philip Wong, Georgia State University

• Suspended Stories: Bordercare, Healing-Centered Research, and the Children of Nepantla - Andrea N. Juarez-Mendoza, Graduate Center - CUNY

Discussant

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago