Reading against the grain, finding the voices of the detained

ABSTRACT

Every day approximately 34,000 people are held in immigration detention centers across the United States, including asylum seekers fleeing persecution and violence. Yet they are often invisible in our public discourse about immigration and mass incarceration. For the Humanities Action Lab’s States of Incarceration traveling exhibition, students at Rutgers University–Newark researched a “riot” that occurred at a New Jersey detention center in 1995. To center the voices of the detainees, we used the technique of reading against the grain, or interpreting documentary evidence to gain information counter to the perspective of the original creators, with news articles, photos, and legal depositions. This article discusses difficulties finding archival information about immigration detention and using the practice of reading against the grain to emphasize the agency of detainees, developing a practice of use to museum professionals eager to contend with contemporary social issues when there are few or compromised sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration detention
• archives
• asylum
• mass incarceration
• media

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers whose comments strengthened this article greatly. I also want to acknowledge the amazing people at the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program and First Friends of NJ and NY for their partnership on the exhibit and, more importantly, the critical work they do every day to protect the rights of immigrants and refugees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Mary Rizzo is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in History and Associate Director of Digital and Public Humanities Initiatives in the graduate program in American Studies at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Class Acts: Young Men and the Rise of Lifestyle (University of Nevada Press, 2015).

Notes

1 The case began as Jama vs. U.S. I.N.S., but the plaintiffs settled against I.N.S.