Audiobooks by Jorja Leap

Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for Their Place, Their Children, and Their Futures Aft

Through oral histories, interviews, embedded observation, and research, the daily struggles of women returning to life after incarceration and concrete solutions to the seemingly hopeless issue. At the end of 2019 in the United States, women comprised the fastest growing population within the criminal justice system. Despite this fact, their journey through this system has not received extensive attention; it is only beginning to be documented. As a result, the impact of women's incarceration and reentry-both on their own lives and in the lives of their children and their families-is neither well understood nor effectively confronted. Anthropologist Jorja Leap argues that all aspects of these women's journey must be illuminated to fully grasp the issues. Leap explores first the traumas girls and women suffer, then the particular challenges faced by women in the criminal justice system, in incarceration, and throughout the reentry process. Leap tells the stories of women who suffer childhood abuse and neglect, including for example, Clara, who suffered twice-once as a child within the welfare system and then as a mother whose children were removed from her care and placed within the system-highlighting the ways the system fails women in particular. She finds that the lack of reentry programs is directly related to rates of recidivism, concluding that the cycle of trauma is the embedded in the system of reentry. Having spent countless hours embedded in the reentry programs that do currently exist, including Susan Burton's A New Way of Life, Leap tells the dramatic stories of many women caught in the system. She closes with several future-facing chapters. The experiences of formerly incarcerated women must be translated into lasting structural change through the development of meaningful programs and policies. Leap delves into pilot programs that offer meaningful models for changing the cycles of abuse and trauma in the lives of women.

Jorja Leap (Author), Sonia Kallen (Narrator)

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Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in One of America's Toughest Communities

In 2010, former gang leader turned community activist Big Mike Cummings asked UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap to colead a group of men struggling to be better fathers in Watts, South Los Angeles. These men, black and brown, from late adolescence to middle age, come together each week to help one another answer the question "How can I be a good father when I've never had one?" Project Fatherhood follows the lives of the men as they struggle with the pain of their own losses, the chronic pressures of poverty and unemployment, and the unquenchable desire to do better and provide more for the next generation. Although the group begins as a forum for them to discuss issues relating to their roles as parents, it slowly grows to mean much more: it becomes a place where they can share jokes and traumatic experiences, joys and sorrows. By immersing herself in the lived experiences of those working to overcome their circumstances, Leap not only dramatically illustrates the realities of fathers trying to do the right thing but also paints a larger sociological portrait of how institutional injustices become manifest in the lives of ordinary people. At a time in which racial justice seems more elusive than ever, the group's development over time demonstrates real-life movement toward solutions as the men help one another make their families and their community stronger.

Jorja Leap (Author), Randye Kaye (Narrator)

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