Overview

Six strangers are locked together in a jail cell for one long night. Meet: Baby, Alexa, Richmond, The Social Worker, and Mudd... Under the mean blaze of all-night fluorescents and clanging cell doors, six diverse women tell their stories--a teen who beat up her bully, a divorcee framed by her violent ex, a sex worker, a social worker, a pregnant mom caught up with the wrong gang, and an older yoga therapist--our writer--who is accused of singlehandedly assaulting four cops. It is her story, their stories, and our U.S. history of bullying and dominance in law enforcement; and it's a story of kindness--six cellmates who share pain, trust, and their own brand of love, even as criminals in an unforgettable night of darkness. This unsparing memoir reveals the reality of surviving an assault, and the moral injury of police brutality. It is for the power-full and those rendered power-less, for assault survivors and those trained to work with trauma, and for everyone in this country finally awakening to what is real. The effect of a police assault is life-changing to its victim; here it leads to a long and determined fight for marriage, sanity, and physical health while the threat of jail is looming. Diana Tokaji, winner of the 2020 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes award, brings to bear a masterpiece of witness and writing that will enthrall the reader as story, and open hearts and minds to truth. For mature readers of mixed ages and backgrounds. Breathtaking. Raw. Brilliant. And beautifully crafted. -Deborah King, creator of ReGrowing Our Wings: Yoga for Healing Trauma I laughed, cried, and truly connected with this story. -Nadia Salazar, Community and Labor Organizer With lyricism and candor, Ms. Tokaji has produced a mirror--everyone should read this necessary work. -Devi S. Laskar, author, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, Winner of the 2020 Asia/Pacific American Literature Award

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9781734148510

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Reviews

A call to action and a balm. -Lorna Jane Cook, author, Outside Wonderland Breathtaking. Raw. Brilliant. And beautifully crafted. -Deborah King, creator of ReGrowing Our Wings: Yoga for Healing Trauma This is not just a book. Not just words on pages. This is a taste of what life is for many. When you read the last word, your eyes are opened wider, your heart has more understanding, and your mind, your mind is wiser. -Debra Bennett, Executive Director, Change Comes Now, advocacy for incarcerated women It was so good, I couldn't put it down. -Maria Washington, founder, Mothers for Justice United Diana Tokaji gives us a deep understanding of the intersection between injustice, survival, and humanity. I laughed, cried, and truly connected with this story...and her vulnerability. -Nadia Salazar, Community and Labor Organizer Six Women In a Cell is important, courageous, thought-provoking. The book interrogates our assumptions, our lives as Americans, police brutality, systemic injustice. With lyricism and candor, Ms. Tokaji has produced a mirror--everyone should read this necessary work. -Devi S. Laskar, author, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, Winner of the 2020 Asia/Pacific American Literature Award Told with searing honesty and great courage, Six Women In a Cell takes its place alongside Henry David Thoreau's, Dr. Martin Luther King's, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's, and Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg's prison testimonials. Read it and weep, read it and recognize your own story, read it and speak truth to power as this author has done with rage, compassion, poetry, and wisdom gathered over a lifetime. Then share it with someone you know. -Joanne Rocky Delaplaine, author, The Local World All of the issues Diana Tokaji unwraps in powerful prose and poetry...came home to roost in 2020. Police brutality, moral injury, assault, sexism, white supremacy, insanity bred of injustice all bubble in the stories of six women thrown together randomly one night in a holding cell. Their microcosm foreshadowed the locked down, out of work, out of school, out of kilter society that is the culmination of such social disintegration. Tokaji's remedies-kindness, silence, yoga, peer counseling, social justice, humane and equal treatment of all-make this book both a work of art and a manual for change. -Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., Co-director Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)

Author Information

Diana Tokaji, MSc, C-IAYT, is a writer, choreographer, and certified yoga therapist. Winner of the 2020 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest awarded by Split This Rock, she has published in feminist presses, parenting magazines, anthologies, newspapers, and literary reviews including Bellevue Literary, Author, Tiferet, and The New Guard (2019 finalist). Her first book, SURVIVING ASSAULT: Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth-Resource for the Living, is an intimate conversation directed to survivors of personal or collective trauma. Ms. Tokaji's celebrated blend of spoken word and dance has been featured in London, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., where her Capital Fringe Festival productions were voted Pick of the Fringe. A twice-certified yoga therapist, she offers private sessions and professional workshops for women: her strength-focused protocol for acute trauma care was honored by Maryland University of Integrative Health for service and dedication to the community...and the larger world. Forthcoming in 2021 please find her collected works, Book of Essays Before I Die. DianaTokaji.com

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