Mainline Mama: A Memoir

A powerful exploration of self-resilience, family, and community from activist and prison abolitionist Keeonna Harris.

Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was “grown.” Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a “mainline mama,” a parent facing the task of raising a child—while still growing up herself—with an incarcerated partner.

In this triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her challenging journey as a mainline mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States to transforming herself into an advocate for women like her—the predominantly Black and Brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives.

Keeonna speaks frankly about the forces that threatened to defeat her, how she learned to re-build her broken relationship with a mother who had lost trust in her, and how time eased the shame, guilt, and stigma of being a young Black teen mom with a partner behind bars. She offers inspiration and solace, showing how to create moments of beauty, humanity, and love—such as picking the perfect wedding dress for a ceremony in a state prison visiting room—in a place designed to break spirits.

Mainline Mama is about creating self-love and community—crucial acts of radical resistance against a prison industrial complex designed to dehumanize and to separate and shut away incarcerated individuals and their loved ones from the world.