Tamar Kraft-Stolar and Jaya Vasandani interview, part 1, 2023-05-22

This is an oral history interview conducted by Obden Mondésir on May 22nd, 2023. This interview covers the years 1977-2023. The narrators begin by discussing their upbringings in the late 1970s. Jaya discusses her upbringing in Japan by immigrant parents and subsequent moves to Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and Washington, D.C to attend college at Georgetown. Tamar discusses her upbringing in radical left communities with her parents, who were active lawyers in the social justice movements of the 1960s and 70s, especially the Attica Prison Uprising. They both describe their first jobs—Jaya at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Tamar at the Correctional Association of New York. Next, Jaya and Tamar describe the history of the Women in Prison Project leadership between 1996 and 2003. The next portion of the interview focuses on Jaya and Tamar’s time working for the Women in Prison Project. They reflect on their initial goals as director and assistant director of the project, and they discuss their strategies for centering the leadership of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women within the coalition’s work. They share insight about their work with the CWP on campaigns for Department of Health oversight of HIV and Hep C care in prisons, amendments to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the anti-shackling law, and the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.