Creative Writing
The Humanization Blog
Ultimately, both the primary goal and strategy of The Humanization Project is to highlight for the world the individual, complex, diverse human beings impacted by imprisonment, both past and ongoing. By sharing their strengths and successes, hopes and visions, skills and hobbies, even mistakes and fears, they can be relatable to anyone. Stereotypes will be replaced with human compassion.
Here we present a deep dive into some people you’ll be glad to know better, people who are important to their communities and families, people who are far more than their worst day.
In various and sundry formats to reach diverse audiences, we offer summaries, full written interviews, video interviews with returning citizens, and more.
The Octopus & The Owl
What is more humanizing than love? Everyone loves someone, yet hardly anyone thinks of love when they think of imprisonment. But we found it here, in all its forms. We found it here romantically ourselves. And this was LOVE!!here, and not in the caricaturized, salacious form on reality TV.
Thus, the first voices we shared were our own, loudly proclaiming the brightest of lights found in the darkest of places. Begun via this blog on Medium, named after beloved animals embodying our strengths, we hoped to inspire the world with the simplest and strongest of human connections.
“I believe in love. I believe it transforms, transports and transcends. I believe it fine-tunes goodness, solidifies strength, ripens resolve, eradicates rage, alleviates stress and elevates empathy” – Lisa Kogan
The Dreaming Tree
When we plant dreams and nurture them, they can grow into grand, strong sentinels watching over our lives, offering shade and shelter, nurturing ecosystems that feed us, and even providing limbs for us to climb above when necessary. Dreams have many tones and many colors, and they mean something different to each of us. Here are the voices of the dreams of some people you should hear.