Reaction to E-Poetry

As an assignment for 01/20/2017, our class had to interact with a work of electronic poetry entitled “Public Secrets” by Sharon Daniel and Erik Loyer. This piece contains testimonies of women imprisoned within the central California penal system, documented by Sharon Daniel. These women share their experiences inside the facility, and narrate their thoughts and feelings about their lives behind the walls.

In order to record and publish these hidden stories, Daniel had to be granted authorization as a legal advocate through a human rights organization called Justice Now. This is a non-profit organization which strives toward a prison reformation/anti-prison movement. The common goal of this group is to construct an end to all forms of gendered violence within state prison systems. They have collectively transformed the lives of many people inside of California’s women’s prisons through programs that build community power and challenge violence within the system.

As I navigated through this website, I was able to read and listen to the pain, suffering, and humiliation that these women are subjected to daily. For example, a woman named Valerie Biedler gave a statement of her opinion on sexism. She explains how she witnessed a man and woman being charged for the same crime, (the woman having never been in trouble, and the man having been in trouble before) and the man received sixteen months while the woman received five years. Biedler quotes the judge saying, “to teach her a lesson” was the reasoning for this difference in sentencing, however, she believes it is because women are "easier to manage" than men in the prison system.

This work of electronic poetry has a powerful impact on its viewers because of its effective use of pathos. As viewers click on the randomly generated quotes they can read the transcripts of the women’s interviews as well as listen to their voices. These voice recordings allow the viewer to not only hear, but feel the anger, sadness, confusion, and distress these women are enduring because of their subjection to inequality and violence in the prison system.

By: Hunter Rose Myers