Toward Liberty and Justice for All: Youth Prison Writings on Freedom

• In Event: Pedagogies of Agency, Justice, and Liberation

Abstract

In this study, I explore the ways in which young writers experiencing incarceration conceptualize freedom. As an ethnographic participant-researcher in youth prison writing workshops for two years, I asked what freedom means to the young people we have locked up. Data include young writers’ talk and text about what freedom is and should be. Findings reveal that young writers conceive of freedom in ways that echo Black feminist liberation theories – that freedom must be social and economic, that it is both individual and communal, and that real freedom is a humanizing practice. Implications center on how these grounded theories of freedom can inform the work of those who teach and work for freedom and justice across all educational settings.

Author

• Adam D. Musser, University of California - Davis