I love Michelle. And I believe her story empowers all of us to recognize our own strengths and innate abilities even when our surrounding culture and systems do not. The systems must change in the United States and globally to support everyone.
BEING MICHELLE follows the astounding journey of a deaf and disabled woman who survived incarceration under unimaginable circumstances by a system that refused to accommodate her needs as a deaf person with autism.
Michelle’s trajectory changed when she met Kim Law, a blind volunteer life coach who teaches classes to people in prison. Today, outside of prison, Kim and Michelle are doing the difficult work of unraveling Michelle’s history, of telling the story of Michelle’s traumatic childhood and her adverse experiences in the criminal justice system. With the support of Kim, Michelle realizes her own voice and strength. Throughout the film Michelle’s artwork provides her own depiction of the trauma she survived as well as a means to her recovery. Ultimately, BEING MICHELLE is a story of redemption. It is about the bonds between women committed to thriving in a broken system, who are forging a path to healing that can only come through facing the truth and communicating it, together.
“More than an estimated 750,000 incarcerated individuals have a disability. 32% of those in federal prisons and 40% of individuals incarcerated in jails have at least one disability.
Additionally, an estimated 153,000 deaf individuals are incarcerated in jails or state and federal prisons.”
— REPORT BY RESPECTABILITY, MIZRAHI ET. AL., 2016