Contrasting Norwegian and American Prison Systems: Becoming (Un)broken

In this chapter I narrate my experiences in Qualitative Camp—from Port Aransas, Texas, in 2007 to Bodø, Norway, in 2009—and speak to how my time learning in those spheres shaped, and continues to refine, me as a scholar-teacher. I oscillate between narrative vignettes and penned poetry believing that these aesthetic representations of my experiences honor the messiness of becoming (un)broken. I offer self-reflexive accounts of three processes that I experienced and continue to undergo in my academic life including a) shattering of self/ves, where I speak about how I learned to break down the artificial walls I’d erected between my scholarly and personal life with respect to my connection to the prison system, b) breaking inflexible belief, where I talk about disruptions to my taken-for-granted assumptions about incarceration, and c) rupturing rigidity, where I acknowledge my own tendency to seek a formula for research and honor the freedom that comes from releasing the “right way.” Ultimately, these cyclical processes I learned in Qualitative Camp gave me the tools that broke me and continue to foster within me an ethos of becoming (un)broken.