ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on critical transitions of "lifers" in there four-year study at a women's correctional facility. It looks into how women inmates navigate the gender order and, in turn, how gendering shapes what Benita refers to as "rebirth". Trying on gender–a concept capturing an experimental component of gendering–becomes a mechanism, a performance, to navigate situations within the hyper-masculine conditions of the contemporary prison. The chapter describes "trying on gender as the new black"–a form of impression management that takes on configurations enlisted for women in prison. It argues that in the extreme case of identity transition from woman to felon, gender becomes powerfully salient. The chapter discusses the experiences of female inmates to demonstrate pains of imprisonment; and the trying-on-gender techniques they use to mitigate the devastation of their gender identities during imprisonment. One may think this is what happens: A catastrophe occurs, and the self is ravaged; yet the humanity in them strives to survive.
