“Greene purposely and smartly explores the complexities and nuances of Little’s struggles and triumphs as well as other African Americans trapped in the carceral state’s unrelenting grip. . . . [This] powerful analysis . . . is a difficult read. But it is indeed a necessary one.”—Journal of American History
“Greene writes engagingly, using the Joan Little case to make incisive intersectional contributions in several historiographies. . . . By making visible southern Black women’s prison and anti-rape organizing, [Greene] challenges the declension theory of the Black freedom movement after the late 1960s, writes Black women’s leadership into second-wave feminism—particularly the antiviolence movement—and honors Black women’s contributions to critiquing state violence as embodied by the growing prison industrial complex.”—Journal of Southern History
“This widely researched book is . . . a solid framing of Black feminist antirape thought and practice: the unbroken generations of Black women, from Ida B. Wells to Rosa Parks, Barbara Smith, Byllye Avery, and Loretta Ross, who linked organizing against sexual violence with ‘demands for affordable and safe housing, adequate income, quality education, health care access, reproductive freedom, decarceration, and other daily survival needs’ (230). . . . [The book] delivers broad coverage of Black women’s activist movements that, as abolition feminist Mariame Kaba writes, ‘can help us ask better questions in the future’ (247).”—Journal of African American History
“A deeply detailed and disturbing historiographical indictment of North Carolina’s criminal justice system with Joan Little’s experiences within that system as the dissecting point. . . . [A] welcome addition to the conversation.”–North Carolina Historical Review
“This is a hugely important book by a veteran historian of civil rights and women’s activism. It is never easy to highlight and seriously engage with the voices and ideas of the most marginalized among us—and certainly incarcerated women of color fit that rubric. Greene does it here with insight, grace, and love. And it is extremely moving to read.”—Annelise Orleck, author of Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965
“Joan Little’s self-defense case unfolded at the epicenter of the histories of women’s rights, the criminal legal system, and Black liberation struggles. Christina Greene’s painstaking research reveals how Joan Little and Black women like her have triumphed against unspeakable violence, punitive laws, and incarceration in order to create a more just world. This book is a triumph.”—Ashley D. Farmer, author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era
