A vital history of organizing within and beyond the walls of women's prisons in the 1970s, illuminating a crucial chapter in today's abolition feminist struggles.
This new edition of an award-winning book features a foreword from acclaimed scholar-activist Sarah Haley and an afterword by Thuma.
During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Scholar-activist Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, imprisoned and institutionalized people's rights, and gender and sexual liberation. All Our Trials chronicles 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, coalition organizing, and radical print cultures that cut through prison walls. In the process, All Our Trials reveals a vibrant culture of opposition to interpersonal and state violence that both transforms our understanding of 1970s social movements and illuminates the history of present struggles for transformative justice.
What People Are Saying
“A rich, vital, vibrant, and uncompromising history of rebellion.” Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
“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 Abolition: Politics, Practices, and Promises
“To understand the history of abolition feminism, read this book. Emily Thuma brilliantly reconstructs the little-known insurgencies of half-a-century ago that rejected carceral feminism and reform in favor of antiracism, class politics, self-determination, abolition and revolution—a revolution that remains unfinished. All Our Trials shows us a way forward.” Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“All Our Trials reminds us that abolition feminism is not a new concept and is deeply rooted in organizing. Emily Thuma gives us a beautifully documented history of the people and organizations that laid the foundation for resistance to using the prison industrial complex as a response to sexual violence. All Our Trials helps us see the steps taken by organizers, activists, and artists to build the anti-prison, anti-violence movement.” Rachel Herzing, coauthor of How to Abolish Prisons
“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.” Priya Kandaswamy, Feminist Formations
“All Our Trials transports readers to an electrifying era of grassroots feminist resistance to prisons and other systems of state punishment. Through first-hand activist accounts, unforgettable images, and vivid storytelling, Emily Thuma teaches us that feminist calls for prison abolition did not just suddenly emerge — we are part of an insurgent legacy of Black feminist strategic organizing, campaigns to defend survivors of violence, and networks of resistance that prison walls could not repress. Since its first publishing, All Our Trials has become an essential contribution to feminist social movement history, but it has also achieved the rare distinction of being a work of scholarship that is circulated as an indispensable resource for grassroots organizers, inside prisons and out. Be galvanized by the stories in this special book and be assured that we are part of a groundswell of calls for freedom.” Alisa Bierria, cofounder of Survived & Punished, Abolition Feminisms
“All Our Trials offers a vital history for contemporary prison abolitionists seeking to make the world anew... Thuma provides today’s abolitionist activists with a highly usable past to learn from, as we strive to redirect our collective capacities away from prisons and policing and towards transformative justice and care.” Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Against the Current
“All Our Trials is not just an account of brutal conditions in which many women face abusive relationships and the violence of incarceration but a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who refuse to be defined by their circumstances. Their trials are not merely legal battles but deeply personal and collective journeys of resilience, resistance, liberation, and survival. As someone who has lived through and alongside these struggles, I invite you to witness the courage, hope, and unwavering fortitude that defines this book. It is a call to action, urging readers to confront the injustices within our criminal legal system and to join in the fight for a more equitable and humane future.” Romarilyn Ralston, California Coalition for Women Prisoners
“This book is a much-needed antidote to carceral feminism. Thuma chronicles movements and the brilliant, angry, and determined organizers who might otherwise be lost to time and forgetting. In doing so, All Our Trials reminds us of the unrepentant resistance to caging and confinement—and that you can fight the carceral state and win.” Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars and Corridors of Contagion
“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, author of Arrested Justice and coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now.
“All Our Trials transforms our understanding of both the history of feminism and of the carceral state. In her deeply compelling account, Thuma documents the work of activists who centered the lives of the most marginalized in their social justice imaginary and their political agenda, producing an anticarceral feminist politics and an expansive analysis of the interconnections between interpersonal and state violence. A crucial and timely read.” Regina Kunzel, author of Criminal Intimacy and In the Shadow of Diagnosis
“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.” Carrie Baker, Journal of American History
“Thuma’s text is not only a tour de force—which it surely is—but also a reflection of the author’s attunement to her own role as a true teacher and a subtly powerful, generous contributor to abolition feminism. It is an invaluable contribution to the combined scholarship and activism that is our practice in social movements today. It is a resource and a guide for anti-carceral feminist action, the sustenance of abolition movements.” Brooke Lober, co-editor of Abolition Feminisms