Harriet Clark

speaker

460 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Aug

Harriet Clark’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · Harriet Clark spent 37 years visiting her mom in prison · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

But fundamentally, Sister Elaine, she walked into that prison every day, and part of what you saw was how much she respected our mothers.

You saw her take delight in them.

You saw, she always said, oh my gosh, your mother loved you so much.

Oh my gosh, your mother showed me this picture.

Your mother showed me this drawing.

Everything she did was to make it clear

I respect the relationship you and your mother still have.

I respect your mother.

And that is incredibly important in an environment where what you are seeing constantly is your mother being degraded.

I think even some of your questions have to do with how critical I am of my mother.

And the truth of the matter is...

I think my mother will have to be out of prison a very long time before I could take a fully critical look because it's very, very painful to be raised where your parent is perpetually being criticized, degraded, and controlled around you.

You feel protective of them.

And I think kids feel protective of their moms in prison, and we knew that Sister Elaine felt protective of them too, that she sometimes felt like the only protective force in there.

And so she was just this experience of lightness in a very dark place and really gave me a way of understanding how you forbear in dark places.

It is collective punishment.

I don't think of it that way.

It is collective punishment.

I mean, when I say that prison is collective punishment, I mean, you know, it's this very tricky balance in the book where on the one hand, I'm trying to communicate that degrading conditions are degrading.

These are forms of deforming people's lives, not just the people inside, but the people who love them.

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