The Story of Aya: Penaealogy, Black Women's Kinship, and the Carceral State

Abstract

This article sits at the intersection of Black feminist critical criminology and feminist ethnography. Based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with lineages of system-impacted Black women in Los Angeles (grandmothers, mothers, and daughters), this work introduces the term penaealogy. Penaealogy is a methodological and theoretical tool to unearth penal genealogies. It is a bricolage term to map how carceral histories and institutions splice their way into the strong, tender, and sinuous threads of Black women's kinship; a quadra-directional lens that investigates the structural, the interpersonal, the past, and the future. Through the exploration of this concept, the paper interrogates how punishment systems impact Black women's kin and specifically Black daughterhood, while also discussing methodological intimacy and Black feminist criminology.