Learning One’s Cell, Learning Oneself

This chapter is devoted to the process of adapting to cell life in an interrogation prison, the process throughout which the women were learning what their bodies could endure. It centers on how the women were recreating conditions of normalcy while adapting to the space. During even their first moments in prison, when they did not know the space or the capacity of their bodies to function under extreme conditions, women prisoners had to learn how to transform their cells into safe places to regroup and gather strength. Some women used their bodies to achieve social visibility as women. They also used their bodies to liberate themselves from the limitations prescribed by their physicality, for example, through a hunger strike, fasting, or suicide. Throughout this adaptation process, the body was becoming a site of transformation and emancipation from the state of being merely a prisoner.