Mainline Mama

A powerful and wrenchingly intimate memoir about the formidable challenge of raising a family separated by prison walls and how we can fight back against a broken byzantine system.

Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was "grown." Within a year she was pregnant, and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a "mainline mama," a parent facing the impossible task of raising a child--while still growing up herself--with an incarcerated partner.

In this devastating and triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her harrowing journey as a Mainline Mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States, to transforming herself into an advocate for other women like her--the predominantly Black and brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives.

Keeonna speaks frankly about the depression and suicidal thoughts that threatened to defeat her, how she learned to rebuild her broken relationship with a mother that lost trust in her, and how time eased the shame, guilt, and stigma of being a young Black teen mom with a partner behind bars. She offers inspiration and solace, showing how to create moments of beauty, humanity, and love in a place designed to break spirits, such as picking the perfect wedding dress for a ceremony in a state prison visiting room.

Mainline Mama is about creating self-love and community--crucial acts of radical resistance against a prison industrial complex that is designed to dehumanize and to separate and shut away incarcerated individuals and their loved ones from the world.

Keeonna Harris is a writer, storyteller, mother of five, prison abolitionist, activist, and academic, born and raised in Watts and South-Central Los Angeles. She has received several honors, including a 2018-2019 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, a 2021 Tin House Summer Residency, a 2023 Baldwin Center for the Arts Residency, and a 2023 Hedgebrook Writer Fellowship as the 2023 Edith Wharton Resident. She is currently a 2024 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow and a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington. Keeonna is developing the "Borderland Project," a mental health and community support system for women forced to navigate carceral institutions to maintain connections with incarcerated persons. She lives in Seattle.

• Publisher: Amistad Press
• Publish Date: February 11, 2025
• Pages: 224 
• Language: English Type Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780063205697
• BISAC Categories: Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black Women Personal Memoirs Civil Rights