Tenacious: Art & Writings by Women in Prison

In the early 2000s, a group of women incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Oregon reached out to the writer Victoria Law, a Queens native working as an activist and prison abolitionist. When just a teenager, Law had cofounded the New York chapter of the Books Through Bars program, which finds ways to send those in prison books that spark intellectual curiosity and explore radical writings from activists, among other goals.

Seeking an outlet to voice their frustrations, experiences, and inequities while in prison, these Oregon women needed an ally on the outside to break through censorship at the hands of prison administration. Tenacious: Art & Writings by Women in Prison was borne out of a dearth of published works exploring the lives of incarcerated women and those recently released. The zine featured poems, essays, art, and letters, with topics ranging from motherhood to sexual assault to general prison conditions. The publication would eventually include contributions from women across the United States.

In defining a “tenacious woman” in the fifth issue of the zine, Barilee Banister, a person incarcerated, described her in part as one who “...possesses the will to make no compromise with wrong. She cannot be bought off to remain silent when faced with injustices.” Tenacious ran for nearly two decades.