Striving to Thrive: Black and Indigenous Women Reflect on Higher Education in Oregon’s Only Women’s Prison

Abstract

This collaborative and creative paper explores and documents the realities of Black and Indigenous transgender and cisgender women at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Oregon in their pursuit of higher education. Through poetry, essays, personal narratives, and art, this paper reveals how Black and Indigenous students experience and navigate the structural and systemic barriers they face in engaging with higher education opportunities while in prison, and reflects on strategies for dismantling those barriers.