ALL OUR TRIALS
Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (Revised and Updated Edition)
Emily L. Thuma
ABOUT THE BOOK:
This new edition of an award-winning book details the vibrant yet overlooked organizing that took place within and around women’s prisons in the 1970s and what that history tells us about abolition feminist struggles today.
During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Activist and scholar Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, prisoners’ and psychiatric patients’ rights, and gender and sexual liberation.
Featuring a new foreword from scholar-activist Sarah Haley and a new afterword by Thuma, All Our Trials explores the organizing, ideas, and influence of those who placed criminalized and marginalized women at the heart of their antiviolence mobilizations. This activism confronted a “tough on crime” political agenda and clashed with the mainstream women’s movement’s strategy of resorting to the criminal legal system as a solution to sexual and domestic violence.
Drawing on extensive archival research and first-person narratives, Thuma weaves together the stories of mass defense campaigns, prisoner uprisings, broad-based local coalitions, national gatherings, and radical print cultures that cut through prison walls. In the process, she illuminates a crucial chapter in an unfinished struggle––one that continues in today’s movements against mass incarceration and in support of transformative justice.
PRAISE:
Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Best Book in LGBTQ Studies, 2020
“All Our Trials offers us a robust history of late twentieth-century radical feminist antiviolence organizing. Thuma reminds us that the activism of the present is built upon an important legacy of work that traversed movements and prison walls. If we are to build an abolitionist feminist future, we would be wise to pay attention to the antiracist queer feminist politics of these activists. We owe a debt of gratitude to them for paving the way, and to Thuma for chronicling their struggles.”
Angela Y. Davis, author of Are Prisons Obsolete? and co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.
“With deep compassion, Thuma offers one of the most compelling historical analyses of how feminist activism of Black, queer, and criminalized women has worked to resist the long and dangerous reach of the carceral state. All Our Trials is an important text in the growing fields of critical prison studies and anti-carceral feminism and a critical addition to activist reading lists.”
Beth E. Richie, co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.
“All Our Trials is a tour de force. It stands among the best books on the history of modern feminist politics and represents one of the most elucidating histories of the US carceral state produced to date. Emily Thuma centers criminalized women’s ideas and organizing, providing graceful historical analysis that will undoubtedly influence current conversations about imprisonment, gender, and sexual violence. This history opens a fiercely urgent path toward an anticarceral feminist future.”
Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
“Emily Thuma’s All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence is a meticulously researched intervention into histories of feminist antiviolence activism. All Our Trials is a profoundly optimistic and inspiring book. Thuma demonstrates the real power of activism and the way that organizations that are often easily dismissed as too radical or utopian can have far-reaching impacts.”
Feminist Formations
“A rich, textured, and elegantly written book, All Our Trials draws on a vast array of archival and oral history sources, which Thuma treats with nuance and care.”
Journal of Women’s History
“Thuma’s book is a refreshing antidote to critiques of the feminist anti-violence movement that have ignored the activism of women of color. Highly readable and deeply archival, with many fascinating images of activists, fliers, posters, and newsletters, Thuma’s book reveals a previously neglected history of important ideological and social movement roots of the current feminist abolition movement. “
Journal of American History
“All Our Trials offers a vital history for contemporary prison abolitionists seeking to make the world anew. “
Against the Current
“A timely account.”
Indypendent
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emily L. Thuma is an associate professor of politics and law and the Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of social movements and the carceral state and a longtime feminist antiviolence advocate and organizer.
RIGHTS INFORMATION:
Please contact subagents for the following languages and territories:
| Language/Territory | Subagent |
|---|---|
| China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam | Big Apple Agency |
| Dutch | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| English outside North America | David Grossman Literary Agency |
| French | Deborah Druba Agency |
| German | Paul & Peter Fritz AG Literatur Agentur |
| Greek | Read n' Right Agency |
| Hebrew | The Deborah Harris Agency |
| Italian | Berla & Griffini Rights Agency |
| Japanese | The English Agency (Japan) Ltd |
| Korean | BC Agency, or Korea Copyright Center |
| Portuguese | RIFF Agency |
| Russia/Baltics/Eastern Europe | Prava I Prevodi |
| Scandinavia | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| Spanish in Latin America | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Spanish in Spain | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Turkish | Anatolialit Agency |
For all other languages/territories, please contact Roam Agency.