Victoria Law's Blog, page 6
June 21, 2013
SNAP judgment
After guest blogging for Bitchmedia about Girls of Color in Dystopia, I'm shifting gears to examine the real-life dystopias (and hopefully victories against some of these realities) in U.S. politics.
My first post looks at Louisiana senator David Vitter's proposed ban on food stamps for those with felony convictions. The ban would be retroactive, meaning that it doesn't matter how long ago a person was convicted of the felony. Under Vitter's amendment, they should starve rather than access a food safety net.
You can read the entire post at
SNAP judgment: Why No Food Stamps for Felons is a Bad Idea
June 4, 2013
my last 2 Girls of Color in Dystopia posts
Two months have flown by!
My last post for the Girls of Color in Dystopia blog has just gone up on the site.
But before that, I explore how Julianna Baggott and Ellen Oh explore post-bomb dystopia. I mean, getting hit by an atomic bomb is dystopic enough already. But both Baggott and Oh take post-bomb dystopia even further into the horrors of what people in power are capable of doing to their fellow people in Pure and Oh's "The Last Day" in Diverse Energies. You can read that post here: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/life-af...
and then the last post, which just went up, is here: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/great-b...
It's been a great (but breakneck) couple of months in which I read (or reread) 40 books to create 16 blogposts. Of those 40 books, only 14 featured girls of color as protagonists. Of those 14, some of them were in the same series (like Partials, Fragments and Isolation), so they're not really 14 stand-alone dystopic novels with girls of color as protagonists.
And then there were 4 books with girls of color as side characters to either boys/men of color or white girls.
That leaves 22 books with no girls of color in them. Some of those books just don't bother describing their characters, but nothing in their actions or choices gives me an impression that the characters are anything other than white.
I'll be transitioning from writing about YA dystopic fiction to real-world (but still often dystopic) politics for the Bitchmedia site. Stay tuned!
My last post for the Girls of Color in Dystopia blog has just gone up on the site.
But before that, I explore how Julianna Baggott and Ellen Oh explore post-bomb dystopia. I mean, getting hit by an atomic bomb is dystopic enough already. But both Baggott and Oh take post-bomb dystopia even further into the horrors of what people in power are capable of doing to their fellow people in Pure and Oh's "The Last Day" in Diverse Energies. You can read that post here: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/life-af...
and then the last post, which just went up, is here: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/great-b...
It's been a great (but breakneck) couple of months in which I read (or reread) 40 books to create 16 blogposts. Of those 40 books, only 14 featured girls of color as protagonists. Of those 14, some of them were in the same series (like Partials, Fragments and Isolation), so they're not really 14 stand-alone dystopic novels with girls of color as protagonists.
And then there were 4 books with girls of color as side characters to either boys/men of color or white girls.
That leaves 22 books with no girls of color in them. Some of those books just don't bother describing their characters, but nothing in their actions or choices gives me an impression that the characters are anything other than white.
I'll be transitioning from writing about YA dystopic fiction to real-world (but still often dystopic) politics for the Bitchmedia site. Stay tuned!
May 23, 2013
it's raining, it's pouring
and this seems to somehow affect my ability to livestream the president's counterterrorism speech. It had been wondered if he would address the hunger strikes (now in their 4th month) of prisoners at Guantanamo and/or the on-going human rights violation that *is* Guantanamo. I don't know if anyone truly expected he would close it (which, as I understand it, he has the power to do even without congressional approval).
I assume, from the lack of celebration on twitter and blogs, that he did not say anything of the sort.
While poking at my mouse to try to find out why the livestream has been freezing or Obama's mouth is moving but no words are coming out, I realized that I haven't posted any of my latest Girls of Color in Dystopia posts since the one about The Summer Prince. So here goes:
"What's Left of Me is a Dystopian Take on Nationalist Fervor": http://bitchmagazine.org/post/what-do...
(and please note that I only talk about the first portion of the book, not about the second 2/3. But it seems an appropriate read given the on-going existence of the prison at Guantanamo)
"Send in the Clones: Looking at Race, Gender and Cloning in The House of the Scorpion and The Lost Girl": http://bitchmagazine.org/post/Send-in...
and the latest, posted only a few minutes ago, is "Race and Body Issues in Nalo Hopkinson's The Chaos":
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/race-bo...
I assume, from the lack of celebration on twitter and blogs, that he did not say anything of the sort.
While poking at my mouse to try to find out why the livestream has been freezing or Obama's mouth is moving but no words are coming out, I realized that I haven't posted any of my latest Girls of Color in Dystopia posts since the one about The Summer Prince. So here goes:
"What's Left of Me is a Dystopian Take on Nationalist Fervor": http://bitchmagazine.org/post/what-do...
(and please note that I only talk about the first portion of the book, not about the second 2/3. But it seems an appropriate read given the on-going existence of the prison at Guantanamo)
"Send in the Clones: Looking at Race, Gender and Cloning in The House of the Scorpion and The Lost Girl": http://bitchmagazine.org/post/Send-in...
and the latest, posted only a few minutes ago, is "Race and Body Issues in Nalo Hopkinson's The Chaos":
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/race-bo...
May 13, 2013
Why I, an adult, read YA novels
Going through my old e-mails trying to find a quote, I came across a response I sent last year to a friend who asked why I, as an adult, read so many YA novels. I thought I'd share it with the world (or at least the handful of people who read my blog posts):
To answer your question about why between 1/3 and 1/4 of my reading is YA novels:
*I write about prisons and violence (both in and out of prisons). The YA novels are (usually) fantastic escapes from all the atrocities I read/research/hear/write about on a regular basis.
*Lots of times the novels in the YA section look much more appealing than the ones in the adult fiction section. (This seems to be especially true of their fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction)
*With my daughter having outgrown the kids' section and moving into reading YA and adult novels, I've been reading more of those to see what's out there (and what she might be interested in). Some of what I've read and not been that into (like the Japanese translation of cult novel Kamikaze Girls) she's really loved. Some of what I've read and been really into (like China Mieville's Railsea) she hasn't been that interested in. And occasionally, what I've read and really liked, she's also read (sometimes a bit reluctantly) and then realized that she really really likes (like China Mieville's first YA novel Un Lun Dun).
*Many of the YA novels I've read are much more fun than the adult books (both fiction and non) that I often pick up.
This spring, my reading of YA novels has also become a focus of a guest blog series I'm doing for BITCH Magazine. You can read my series, Girls of Color in Dystopia, here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/blogs/girls-...
To answer your question about why between 1/3 and 1/4 of my reading is YA novels:
*I write about prisons and violence (both in and out of prisons). The YA novels are (usually) fantastic escapes from all the atrocities I read/research/hear/write about on a regular basis.
*Lots of times the novels in the YA section look much more appealing than the ones in the adult fiction section. (This seems to be especially true of their fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction)
*With my daughter having outgrown the kids' section and moving into reading YA and adult novels, I've been reading more of those to see what's out there (and what she might be interested in). Some of what I've read and not been that into (like the Japanese translation of cult novel Kamikaze Girls) she's really loved. Some of what I've read and been really into (like China Mieville's Railsea) she hasn't been that interested in. And occasionally, what I've read and really liked, she's also read (sometimes a bit reluctantly) and then realized that she really really likes (like China Mieville's first YA novel Un Lun Dun).
*Many of the YA novels I've read are much more fun than the adult books (both fiction and non) that I often pick up.
This spring, my reading of YA novels has also become a focus of a guest blog series I'm doing for BITCH Magazine. You can read my series, Girls of Color in Dystopia, here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/blogs/girls-...
May 12, 2013
just in time for Mother's Day, governor signs bill enabling incarcerated parents a chance to keep their kids
Alise Hegle gave birth to her daughter while facing a seven-year sentence for her meth addiction. Her daughter was born two months early and tested positive for a small amount of meth (".001," Hegle clarified). Her daughter was placed in foster care. One month later, Hegle was arrested and sent to jail.
"I'd been in and out of jail throughout my pregnancy," Hegle told Truthout. But, with her daughter in foster care, Hegle now had to contend with trying to attend custody hearings from behind bars. "I sent in seventy kites [requests] to try to get transported to court hearings," she recounted. She repeatedly asked the guards about attorneys and social workers. Lacking money for phone calls, she was unable to call to search for resources.
Hegle's difficulties navigating the child welfare system from behind bars are not uncommon.
One week after losing his trial, Shayne Rochester lost his son to the child welfare system. Despite having a service plan that included visitation with his son, he was sent to a Washington state prison for men across the state. "I only saw my son once in that first thirteen months," he recounted. He spent his entire prison sentence trying to access services he would need to maintain contact and plan for reunification. "I didn't get the services I needed till I was six months to the gate," he told Truthout. He won his appeal and was released from prison only six days before his parental rights would have been terminated under the Adoption and Safe Families Act.
Read the whole story here:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/16312-...
May 9, 2013
Thursday...and a reading on Sunday
For the past couple of days, I've been working on an article about a bill on a governor's desk awaiting his signature. (No, I won't tell you which governor or what bill...yet) Since the governor had 20 days to sign the bill into law, I figured that I had time to track down my interviewees and corral them into talking to me.
The story was unfolding a lot faster than I anticipated: Two days ago, I got a text letting me know that the governor had agreed to sign the bill. Yesterday, he did.
So my story is in (and may be the only larger news coverage of the event). Now I await editorial response.
My latest post on the Girls of Color in Dystopia blog series for Bitchmedia also went up today. I look at the society run by women of color in Alaya Dawn Johnson's beautifully written The Summer Prince.
You can read the blogpost here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/draft-c...
AND...because sending my article in left me with a "now what?" void, I finished my next blog post and am now trying to wrap up the one after that. (My, aren't I a busy bee today?)
Finally, if you live in the NYC area and aren't spending Mother's Day with the mamas in your life (or think they'd wanna come to this), come to the make/shift Mother's Day reading at Zinc Bar! Details are here: http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8...
The story was unfolding a lot faster than I anticipated: Two days ago, I got a text letting me know that the governor had agreed to sign the bill. Yesterday, he did.
So my story is in (and may be the only larger news coverage of the event). Now I await editorial response.
My latest post on the Girls of Color in Dystopia blog series for Bitchmedia also went up today. I look at the society run by women of color in Alaya Dawn Johnson's beautifully written The Summer Prince.
You can read the blogpost here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/draft-c...
AND...because sending my article in left me with a "now what?" void, I finished my next blog post and am now trying to wrap up the one after that. (My, aren't I a busy bee today?)
Finally, if you live in the NYC area and aren't spending Mother's Day with the mamas in your life (or think they'd wanna come to this), come to the make/shift Mother's Day reading at Zinc Bar! Details are here: http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8...
May 6, 2013
Stop Severing Incarcerated Parents from their children! Support SHB 1284 today!
Incarcerated parents and their children need a more fair chance to work toward reunification and safe permanency options that don't involve severing family ties forever!
On April 22, the Washington State legislature – by a near unanimous vote – passed SHB 1284 that guides the courts’ current discretion to delay termination of parental rights if the parent’s incarceration or prior incarceration is a significant factor for the child’s continued out-of-home placement, as long as the delay is in the best interest of the child.
All the bill needs to become law is the governor's signature! The governor has 20 days to sign SHB 1284 into law.
Contact Governor Inslee’s office and tell him to sign SHB 1284 (Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill) into law!
Please send a message to Governor Inslee by clicking here and also to Andi Smith, the Governor’s senior policy advisor at Andi.Smith@gov.wa.gov
Sample message:
Please sign into law SHB 1284 (the Children of Incarcerated Parents bill), which guides the courts’ current discretion to delay termination of parental rights if the parent’s incarceration or prior incarceration is a significant factor for the child’s continued out-of-home placement, as long as delay is in the best interest of the child.
Mothers don’t stop loving and caring for their children when they are in prison. Unnecessarily separating families is devastating to children in foster care, their incarcerated parents, and our communities
Keeping families together keeps our communities safer and more supported as family reunification is linked to reduced recidivism, greater family stability and improved emotional response for children.
Background on SHB 1284 and ASFA's impact on families in Washington State
The 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) states that termination of parental rights proceedings must be commenced by the state when a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the past 22 months. There are three exceptions to this requirement:
The child is in the care of a relative.
The agency has documented a compelling reason why filing a termination petition would not be in the best interests of the child;
Or the agency has not provided the child with the necessary reunification services.
Because of barriers to accessing visits with their children, social services, and legal representation, families who are involved in the criminal justice system suffer from a lack of sufficient guidance in our current child welfare laws. This bill will enhance the prospects for long-lasting permanency for children in out-of-home care, as it will provide courts guidance to better assess the barriers and challenges facing incarcerated parents, such as limited access to family support programs, therapeutic services, and visiting opportunities. However, it will not prevent the state from stepping in when necessary to terminate parental rights in order to provide children with safe, stable and permanent adoptive homes. What is in the best interest of the child remains of the utmost importance.
Under ASFA, Washington State requires the court to order the department or supervising agency to file a petition seeking termination of parental rights if the child has been in out-of-home care for fifteen of the last twenty-two months since the date the dependency petition was filed unless the court makes a good cause exception as to why the filing of a termination of parental rights petition is not appropriate. The “good cause exception” includes but is not limited to the following:
The child is being cared for by a relative;
the department has not provided to the child's family such services as the court and the department have deemed necessary for the child's safe return home;
or the department has documented in the case plan a compelling reason for determining that filing a petition to terminate parental rights would not be in the child's best interests.
Unintended Consequences of ASFA
The exceptions enacted under WA law fail to help criminal justice involved families. Incarcerated parents’ cases have unique circumstances, permanency planning challenges, difficult timeframes (sentences are often longer than 15 out of 22 months), and are frequently more labor-intensive and time consuming than cases involving parents in the community. Therefore, Washington’s interpretation of ASFA often tips the scale toward termination in these cases, even when not necessarily in the long-term best interest of the child and family, the result is devastating to children in foster care and their incarcerated parents. In response to similar barriers, in 2010 New York expanded its ASFA laws to include incarceration, prior incarceration or participation in a residential substance abuse treatment program as a reason for delay where a parent maintains a meaningful role in the child’s life.
Let's help make sure that incarcerated parents and their children get the same chance! Contact Governor Inslee today!
On April 22, the Washington State legislature – by a near unanimous vote – passed SHB 1284 that guides the courts’ current discretion to delay termination of parental rights if the parent’s incarceration or prior incarceration is a significant factor for the child’s continued out-of-home placement, as long as the delay is in the best interest of the child.
All the bill needs to become law is the governor's signature! The governor has 20 days to sign SHB 1284 into law.
Contact Governor Inslee’s office and tell him to sign SHB 1284 (Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill) into law!
Please send a message to Governor Inslee by clicking here and also to Andi Smith, the Governor’s senior policy advisor at Andi.Smith@gov.wa.gov
Sample message:
Please sign into law SHB 1284 (the Children of Incarcerated Parents bill), which guides the courts’ current discretion to delay termination of parental rights if the parent’s incarceration or prior incarceration is a significant factor for the child’s continued out-of-home placement, as long as delay is in the best interest of the child.
Mothers don’t stop loving and caring for their children when they are in prison. Unnecessarily separating families is devastating to children in foster care, their incarcerated parents, and our communities
Keeping families together keeps our communities safer and more supported as family reunification is linked to reduced recidivism, greater family stability and improved emotional response for children.
Background on SHB 1284 and ASFA's impact on families in Washington State
The 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) states that termination of parental rights proceedings must be commenced by the state when a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the past 22 months. There are three exceptions to this requirement:
The child is in the care of a relative.
The agency has documented a compelling reason why filing a termination petition would not be in the best interests of the child;
Or the agency has not provided the child with the necessary reunification services.
Because of barriers to accessing visits with their children, social services, and legal representation, families who are involved in the criminal justice system suffer from a lack of sufficient guidance in our current child welfare laws. This bill will enhance the prospects for long-lasting permanency for children in out-of-home care, as it will provide courts guidance to better assess the barriers and challenges facing incarcerated parents, such as limited access to family support programs, therapeutic services, and visiting opportunities. However, it will not prevent the state from stepping in when necessary to terminate parental rights in order to provide children with safe, stable and permanent adoptive homes. What is in the best interest of the child remains of the utmost importance.
Under ASFA, Washington State requires the court to order the department or supervising agency to file a petition seeking termination of parental rights if the child has been in out-of-home care for fifteen of the last twenty-two months since the date the dependency petition was filed unless the court makes a good cause exception as to why the filing of a termination of parental rights petition is not appropriate. The “good cause exception” includes but is not limited to the following:
The child is being cared for by a relative;
the department has not provided to the child's family such services as the court and the department have deemed necessary for the child's safe return home;
or the department has documented in the case plan a compelling reason for determining that filing a petition to terminate parental rights would not be in the child's best interests.
Unintended Consequences of ASFA
The exceptions enacted under WA law fail to help criminal justice involved families. Incarcerated parents’ cases have unique circumstances, permanency planning challenges, difficult timeframes (sentences are often longer than 15 out of 22 months), and are frequently more labor-intensive and time consuming than cases involving parents in the community. Therefore, Washington’s interpretation of ASFA often tips the scale toward termination in these cases, even when not necessarily in the long-term best interest of the child and family, the result is devastating to children in foster care and their incarcerated parents. In response to similar barriers, in 2010 New York expanded its ASFA laws to include incarceration, prior incarceration or participation in a residential substance abuse treatment program as a reason for delay where a parent maintains a meaningful role in the child’s life.
Let's help make sure that incarcerated parents and their children get the same chance! Contact Governor Inslee today!
Overcrowding in California's Women's Prisons
Earlier this year, I wrote an article examining the move to further overcrowd the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF).
As a direct result of this overcrowding, at least two deaths and one serious injury have occurred at CCWF in March 2013. Californians United for a Responsible Budget and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners have released a video describing some of the egregious medical neglect that has occurred inside.
Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDo5Ru...
and then learn more about what you can do to help curb overcrowding and bring people home.
As a direct result of this overcrowding, at least two deaths and one serious injury have occurred at CCWF in March 2013. Californians United for a Responsible Budget and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners have released a video describing some of the egregious medical neglect that has occurred inside.
Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDo5Ru...
and then learn more about what you can do to help curb overcrowding and bring people home.
Race, Class, Caste & American History in Karen Sandler's Tankborn
While I was discussing reproductive justice (or the lack thereof) at the Rethinking Prisons conference in Nashville, TN, this past weekend, my latest post looking at race, class, caste and parallels to American history in Karen Sandler's Tankborn went up on the Bitch Media site.
You can read the whole post here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/looking...
Tankborn's futuristic world of Loka contains a strict hierarchy of trueborns, demis, lowborns and Genetically Engineered Non-humans (GENs), that has been compared to India's caste system. Sandler herself has stated that a colleague's descriptions of growing up in India under the caste system influenced her first draft. We see traces of Indian culture throughout—from the curry and saffron used to spice otherwise-futuristic foods to names like Devakl, Ved and Pitamah.
While reading Tankborn, I immediately thought of not India (whose caste system I know little about), but the United States' own shameful history (and continuing practice) of pitting low-income whites against people of color in ways that prevent unified resistance to the ruling class.
Sandler builds a world which recreates that system. In the book, Earth's climate has collapsed, rendering it uninhabitable. The trueborns, or most affluent class, escaped to the planet Loka. Trueborns have their own hierarchy: high-status, demi-status and low status, but they are all considered better than those who could not afford passage, or lowborns, who bought their way to the new world with servitude. Then the GENs were created. Created in tanks and raised to be poorly-paid workers to trueborns, GENs become the most-despised underclass. GENs who anger trueborns can be reset—their minds, complete with memories and personalities, are wiped clean while their body and skillsets are preserved.
You can read the whole post here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/looking...
April 29, 2013
Imagine a World of Forced Pregnancies: my new post on Girls of Color in Dystopia
I've never been attracted to books set in a world in which women have been stripped of their reproductive rights and function mainly as breeders.
After all, I live in a very real society in which women's rights over their bodies are constantly being eroded. The right to family seems to not apply to those who are poor, of color and/or incarcerated. So why escape to a world in which all of these injustices have been magnified?
The cover of Dan Well's Partials depicts the back of a dark-haired girl of ambivalent skin color looking out over a wasteland. Nothing in the summary indicates that there are people of color in the book. To the jaded reader, Partials might very well be yet another book in which people of color have not survived the apocalypse. I wouldn't have picked up Partials for this blog series on race and gender in dystopia had my twelve-year-old daughter not read and recommended it, letting me know that the main character is a girl of color. And she's not the only girl of color who's survived dystopia.
For full post, go to: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/partial...
