Girlhood Arrested

What began as a zine and self-publishing workshop with The Visiting Room Project (TVRP) developed into a 230 page book initiated by my collaborator Kennedi and me. This book, Girlhood Arrested: How Girlhood is Shaped by the Carceral Landscape, is a reflection on the Girlhood Zine Workshop we held, dualities of carcerality-punishment and play-resistance, the possibilities of girlhood as an organizing construct of self outside of incarceration, and is a transhistorical engagement with the archival gaps of women’s lives and stories. It contains zine facsimiles and t-shirts by participants, essays, interviews, and archival material from the Louisiana state archives.

The design takes inspiration from disciplinary forms in prison. Throughout the book, text and images run over and outside of the gridded lines with no regard for attempts to fix or constrain—a conceptual move reflecting the formation of identity outside of the context of incarceration and what’s been imposed onto the women.

Book design, workshop facilitation and development, visual and historical research, writing, conceptual development, interviewing

↑ Form used as a visual reference.


↑ Found images of Louisiana women's prison wayfinding typography.
Girlhood Arrested

What began as a zine and self-publishing workshop with The Visiting Room Project (TVRP) developed into a 230 page book initiated by my collaborator Kennedi and me. This book, Girlhood Arrested: How Girlhood is Shaped by the Carceral Landscape, is a reflection on the Girlhood Zine Workshop we held, dualities of carcerality-punishment and play-resistance, the possibilities of girlhood as an organizing construct of self outside of incarceration, and is a transhistorical engagement with the archival gaps of women’s lives and stories. It contains zine facsimiles and t-shirts by participants, essays, interviews, and archival material from the Louisiana state archives.

The design takes inspiration from disciplinary forms in prison. Throughout the book, text and images run over and outside of the gridded lines with no regard for attempts to fix or constrain—a conceptual move reflecting the formation of identity outside of the context of incarceration and what’s been imposed onto the participants.

Book design, workshop facilitation and development, visual and historical research, writing, conceptual development, interviewing

↑ Form used as a visual reference.