The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a conversation revolving around the new book, Evidence of V, by Sheila O’Connor.

Thursday, January 23, 2020, 7pm

In 1911, Minnesota opened a state reformatory for girls in Sauk Centre. From the beginning, the incarcerated girls were largely committed for minor status offenses, most notably immorality and incorrigibility, and for decades they were paroled as domestic servants in private homes. In operation until 1999, the history of the Minnesota Home School for Girls, and the harsh treatment the inmates endured—including shockingly long sentences, solitary confinement, restricted diets, corporeal punishment, ice baths, and forced separations from infants born during their incarcerations—have largely gone undocumented. Join Minnesota Home School survivor and prison abolitionist Tonja Honsey, gender-justice educator Colleen Bell, Criminal Justice Reform Advocate Kahlee Griffey, and author Sheila O’Connor, whose recent book, Evidence of V, chronicles her maternal grandmother’s six-year sentence as a pregnant fifteen year old in 1935, as they discuss the legacy of the juvenile imprisonment for women and girls, the long-term trauma for survivors and their descendants, and the ongoing sexual abuse to prison pipeline that continues to incarcerate victimized girls and women across the United States.

Tonja Honsey identifies as an incarceration survivor, a revolutionary mother,  and a community healer. She is Founder of We Rise, a collective of formerly incarcerated leaders. Tonja works for criminal justice policy change locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Colleen Bell works with justice-involved women as a volunteer and an Inside-Out course facilitator. She is a professor in Conflict Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies at Hamline University and is a board member of Ostara, a national nonprofit dedicated to birth work in prisons and jails.

Kahlee Griffey is an advocate and consultant for criminal justice reform. Kahlee’s experience with incarceration as a juvenile motivated her to get a degree in Criminal Justice and start fighting for those still suffering from this harmful system. Her background is in the areas of community reentry, restorative justice, and the gender specific needs of justice involved women and girls. Kahlee currently serves as a member of the Minnesota Task Force for Justice Involved Women and Girls and is the co-chair of the Girls Collaborative.

Sheila O’Connor is the author of six novels including her most recent hybrid book, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions, which the Marshall Project included among the Best Criminal Justice Books of 2019. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Hamline University.

Free and open to all

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