Children’s Literature Project 

As of 2010, approximately 1.3 million people in the US have been separated from their mothers prior to their 18th birthday due to parental incarceration.

58% of women in prisons are mothers.

80% of women in jails are mothers.

Prison Policy Initiative, Read more.

The Poetic Justice Children’s Literature Project was born in 2024 from participants’ need to learn together with a peer-led community how to manage the intense and complex grief they are feeling while separated from their children, and to create a community that focuses on helping women through the process of mothering from the inside.

After 5 years inside California women’s prisons and jails, we uncovered a very serious and urgent issue: the harmful effects of parent-child separation. These effects became apparent with the discovery that 70% of our participants in California and 86% of our participants in Oklahoma are mothers.

In August 2024, Poetic Justice and the incarcerated advisory board at CIW decided to provide a programming option to mothers/caregivers, during which they have the opportunity to read and discuss picture books about incarcerated parents. What began as a one-time workshop has transformed into so much more. Our participants have looked at “what’s missing” in the representation of children experiencing parental incarceration and started to write children’s books of their own. For many mothers, these books are not only gifts to their children, but they are also gifts to their younger selves, as parental incarceration often holds a generational impact.

How it began…

Creating change.

Our participants have been inspired to create change as there are only a handful of picture books that represent parental incarceration, and of those, only 2-3 represent mothers. Their hope is to transform the visitation room into a space that fosters mother-child connection by providing these books as a resource to guide conversation amongst mothers and their children on the experiences and emotions that come with losing a loved one to incarceration. These conversations will allow mothers to continue to fulfill their role but most of all allow for healing to occur with their children, and our community as whole.

Resources.

Poetic Justice believes in the power of community as we hope to strengthen our community that is impacted by mass incarceration. This includes our children. Providing avenues of conversation is vital to the healing process. If you have or known of a child currently experiencing the incarceration check out the following books as a resource. Click on the authors’ to find out more about each book.