Victoria Law, familiarly known as Vikki Law, is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer. Her books are Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (2009, 2012), Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities (edited with China Martens, 2012), Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (co-authored by Maya Schenwar, 2020), and Prisons Make Us Safer: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration (2021). Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration (2024).
Victoria Law is of Chinese descent and was born and raised in Queens, New York. As an A student in high school, she committed armed robbery to initiate herself into a Chinatowngang but was given probation as a first offense.[1] Her exposure to incarcerated people at Rikers Island prompted her to get involved in prison support.[2][3]
Career
Law continued fighting for prison abolition, co-founding Books Through Bars NYC, a books-to-prisoners organization, as a joint project between Blackout Books and Nightcrawlers Anarchist Black Cross in 1996 at the age of nineteen.[4] In 2003, at the prompting of women incarcerated in an Oregon prison, she launched the zineTenacious: Art and Writing from Women in Prison.[5] In 2009, after a decade of researching and writing about incarcerated women in the United States, Law published her first monograph with PM Press, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women, with a second edition released in 2012.[6] She is a frequent invited speaker, especially since publishing the first edition of Resistance Behind Bars.[7]
Law works with Books Through Bars (now located at Freebird Bookstore[8] in Brooklyn). She has participated in many of ABC No Rio's projects, including its Visual Arts Collective and the darkroom that she co-founded and co-built. She has had tangential involvement in the punk collective, as well, and was the primary caregiver of the art and activist space's last remaining squatter, Cookiepuss (1996–2013), a calico cat.[9]
In her twenties, after having a child, Law's activism began to include raising awareness of parents in anarchist communities' need for solidarity, including free childcare activities at events and protests. Together with long-time mamazine maker China Martens, Law began doing workshops and editing compilation zines about parenting for activists and their allies, called Don't Leave Your Friends Behind. The two eventually co-edited a book by the same name, also published by PM Press.[10] As her child got older and Law engaged with the literature her child read, Law began to focus attention on the lack of racial diversity in young adult fiction, including writing a series of blog posts on girls of color in dystopia for Bitch Media.[11]
Selected works
Books
Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration, Haymarket Books, 2024[12]
Prisons Make Us Safer: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration, Beacon Press, 2021[13]
Prison by Any Other Name:The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. The New Press, 2020. Co-authored by Maya Schenwar[14]
Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, PM Press, 2012, 2009[15]
Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities, PM Press, 2012. Edited with China Martens[16]
Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration, Haymarket Books, 2024.[17]
Zines
In addition to many zines she has authored or edited:[18]
Tenacious: Art & Writing from Women in Prison, 2003–2020, editor[19]
In addition to print articles about gender, incarceration and resistance,[23] she is a regular contributor to online news and culture venues, including Bolts,[24]The Nation,[25] and Truthout,[26] among others.
Awards
2013, Health Behind Bars Fellowship, John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice[27]
↑ Law, Vikki; Martens, China (2012). Don't leave your friends behind: concrete ways to support families in social justice movements and communities. Oakland: PM Press. ISBN9781604867978. OCLC815480102.
↑ Law, Victoria (September 10, 2024). Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration. Haymarket Books. ISBN9798888902561.
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