Mainline Mama: A Memoir

In this stunning debut account, Harris, a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, discusses raising a child while her husband was incarcerated. Growing up in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood in the 1980s, Harris harbored dreams of becoming an obstetrician. She got pregnant in ninth grade, however, and shortly after her son’s birth, the father, Jason, was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for gang-related crimes. Harris regularly visited and wrote to Jason, and the couple got married while he was still behind bars. In evocative prose, Harris illuminates the experience of coming to “know prisons like a close relative,” bonding with other women whose partners were imprisoned, and learning how to maintain her connection with Jason while building a meaningful life apart from him and completing a degree in women’s studies. Harris frames her narrative with revealing letters to herself (“To the outside world, you look good.... People assume you’re some magical Negro because you don’t look crazy, your kids aren’t locked up, and Jason got out of prison and now works a regular job”) that provide unflinching insight into the plight of women in her position. This affecting dispatch from inside the carceral state is not to be missed. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)