Subini Ancy Annamma: The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus

Subini Ancy Annamma’s The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus tailors its focus specifically around the experiences of ten children in juvenile incarceration education programs to explore how the prison nation culture of punishment links systems of incarceration and education and their responses to youth. In her book, Annamma interviewed and worked with ten “multiply-marginalized dis/abled [girls] of color” to show that intersections of race, dis/ability, and gender lead to the creation of criminal identities in all social systems of the prison nation (Annamma 2018, p. 3). For readers who are teachers, youth criminal incarceration workers, social workers, and the like, Pedagogy of Pathologization draws not only necessary links between societal treatment of multiply-marginalized dis/abled children of color but encourages changes in educational theory, pedagogy, curriculum, solidarity, and policy. For all other readers, the work provides a thoughtful confluence of marginalized identities, revealing the ways that American prison nation encourages oppression beyond general understandings of mass incarceration, and drawing out how marginalization affects the very way the most vulnerable populations are perceived. While Annamma’s work is occasionally extremely narrowly focused around juvenile incarceration education, the book as a whole is radically eye-opening in Annamma’s writing itself, her theoretical approach, and the implications for systems of youth education and incarceration as a whole. …