Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

THE ONLYFREEDOMI CAN SEE:Imprisoned Queer Writing and thePolitics of the UnimaginableStephen DillonIf we feel calm, what must we forget to inhabit such a restful feeling?—Jasbir Puar 2In one of his first letters to me, “C,” a fifty-year-old queer (non-normativelygendered) Latino prisoner incarcerated in south Texas for more thantwenty years, wrote the following: “The only trip I’ve had was on a buscalled Blue Bird when I was transferred from my hometown to where Iam right now. If you have a little time tell me how it feels…when youare on a plane way up there in the air.” 3 This passage, and C’s larger bodyof writing, narrates the ways that the US prison regime works with race,gender, space, and mobility to structure regimes of knowledge—not onlyhow we understand the forces that bring us into being, but also, quite169