Critical Storytelling from Behind Invisible Bars: Undergraduates and Inmates Write Their Way Out

Critical stories are narratives that recount the writer’s experiences, situating those experiences in broader cultural contexts. In this volume of Critical Storytelling, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed peoples share insights from their liminality to help readers learn from their perspectives on living from behind invisible bars. Female inmates at Decatur’s Correctional Center and the undergraduate Millikin University students who worked with them come together to give voice to their specific histories of living from behind invisibile bars and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Specifically, the voices in this volume seek to expose, analyze, and challenge deeply-entrenched narratives and characterizations of incarcerated women, whose histories are often marked by sexual abuse, domestic violence, poverty, PTSD, a lack of education, housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance addiction. These silenced female inmate voices need to be heard and contextualized within the larger metanarrative of prison literature. Through telling critical stories, these writers attempt to: sustain recovery from trauma, make positive changes and informed decisions, create a real sense of empowerment, strengthen their capacity to exercise personal agency, and inspire audiences to create change far outside the reaches of physical and metaphorical bars.

Contributors are: Anonymous, Soren Belle, Megan Batty, Dwight G. Brown, Jr., Sandra Brown, Kathryn Coffey, Kelly Cunningham, Paiten Hamilton, Kathlyn J. Housh, Rebekah Icenesse, Kala Keller, Jelisa Lovette, Bric Martin, Amanda Minetti, Laura Nearing, Angie Oaks, Claire Prendergast, Cara Quiett, J. M. Spence, Noah Villarreal and Alisha Walker.

Carmella J. Braniger, Ph.D. (2003), Oklahoma State University, is Associate Professor of English at Millikin University. She has published poems and critical stories, including a story in Critical Storytelling in Uncritical Times (Sense, 2017), for which she served as editor.

Kathryn Coffey is an undergraduate at Millikin University. She has had articles published on the Decaturian and BURST. She also has work published in Collage (Fall 2019).

Rebekah Icenesse is an English Writing undergraduate at Millikin University. She has had articles published in BURST, and the Decaturian, where she serves as an editor.

Alex V. Miller is a Professor at Millikin University where he teaches all levels of acting and stage combat, serves as Coordinator of Performance, Mainstage Director, Resident Fight Director, and is founder of and Executive Director for Shakespeare Corrected. Though his professional performance career has taken him from coast to coast, he currently lives on a small farm in Hammond, IL with his wife and two children.