Submerged: On Healing from Abuse While Navigating a Lifetime of Imprisonment - Softcover

Sheena King

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798887441344

Publisher: PM Press, 2025

Synopsis

Fearless honesty. Deep despair. Resilient discovery. Profound forgiveness. Revolutionary hope and liberation. Submerged is the story of one woman's journey from a nightmare of childhood sexual abuse through a world of drug gangs and murder to prison and, ultimately, personal redemption through faith and a dedication to helping others. This is Sheena King's story, a raw, harrowing memoir anchored in revolutionary and transformative love. It is, at the same time, a story shared by tens of thousands of women, especially women of colour who are incarcerated as the result of events that began with abuse by someone who should have been there to protect and nurture them. During her years in prison, Sheena found the strength to free herself through the process of helping countless other victims of childhood abuse. Now she offers her memoir with the express hope that it will help many more. As Rikeyah Lindsay of the Abolitionist Law Center writes in her foreword, 'This book shows that we must take our collective healing and liberation seriously, interrogating the root causes and demanding accountability not only for ourselves but also for the systems that create the conditions for so much harm to occur.' With Lindsay's foreword and an introduction by Victoria Law, Submerged offers essential insights for all who want to understand and participate in the growing movement for alternatives to incarceration. In her own introduction Sheena King writes: 'I've told my story. Now tell yours. It will free you.'

About this title

About the Authors

Sheena King is presently serving a life sentence at SCI Muncy in Muncy, PA, where she is an advocate for incarcerated women, with degrees in religious studies and Christian counseling. She is the published author of a book of poems and journal entries titled Unheard Souls and 3Sum. Her poems and essays have been published in journals including Let's Get Free, Daughters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Peace and Justice Newspaper, Prison Health News, Centers for Wisdom, and Tenacious. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including International Library of Poetry, and Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States.

Rikeyah Lindsey is healing justice organizer for Straight Ahead, the 501(c)(4) arm of the Abolitionist Law Center.

Victoria Law is a freelance journalist and author focused on incarceration, gender, and resistance. Her books include Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, and Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration.

Edition details

• Publisher: PM Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798887441344
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192