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. Patriarchy, misogyny, and systemic racism marginalize and criminalize these mothers, pushing them into the grasp of penal control and exacerbating their racialized and gendered oppression after incarceration. Invisible Mothers exposes the difficult realities that African American, West Indian, and Latina mothers experience when reentering the community after incarceration and navigating motherhood. Armed with critical insight, Invisible Mothers demonstrates the paradox of visibility: social institutions treat mothers of color as invisible, restricting them from equal opportunities, and simultaneously as hypervisible, penalizing them for the ways they survive their marginalization. Though formerly incarcerated mothers of color are forced to live in a state of disempowerment and hypersurveillance, Invisible Mothers reveals and contests their marginalization and highlights how mothers of color perform motherwork on their own terms.