Abstract:
This quasi-ethnographic research documents the autobiographical utterances of incarcerated women taking part in a narrative writing course, Life Writing, at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. The purpose of this research was to cultivate a better understanding of how incarcerated women move through different discourses of identity via narrative writing, and how, consequently, courses in narrative writing can benefit inmates by encouraging them to reconnect to their lives and memories prior to incarceration. The results of this study reveal how incarcerated women neither wholly transcend nor resist the material reality of prison existence; however, through the
process of narrative writing and dialogic sharing sessions, incarcerated women were able to experience the positive effects of difference in a dialogic community of learners. Furthermore, this research illustrates how the interplay of self-constructions affirms women's identities not connected to their criminal lives and decisions.
