Mae’r carreg milltir o gyfnod modern o garcharu menywod, o’r ‘Women’s House of Detention,’ bellach wedi’i anghofio. Ond pan safai yn Greenwich Village yn Efrog Newydd, o 1929 i 1974, roedd yn gysylltiad i’r degau o filoedd o fenywod, dynion trawsryweddol, a phobl anghydffurfiol o ran rhywedd a oedd yn byw yn ei gelloedd gorlawn. Roedd rhai o’r carcharorion hyn – Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur – yn enwog, ond carcharwyd y mwyafrif helaeth am y troseddau o fod yn dlawd ac yn amhriodol fenywaidd. Heddiw, mae tua 40% o’r pobl mewn carchardai menywod yn hunaniaethu fel cwiar, ond roedd y canran bron yn sicr yn uwch mewn degawdau cynharach.

Mae’r hanesydd Hugh Ryan yn archwilio gwreiddiau’r o garcharu cwiar a thraws, sy’n cysylltu casineb tuag at fenywod, trais rhywiol gan y wladwriaeth, gwladychiaeth, gwaith rhyw a methiannau diwygio carchardai. Ac mae’n ail-greu bywydau anhysbys cannoedd o Efrog Newydd oedd wedi’u carcharu, gan wneud achos cwiar ar gyfer diddymu carchar yn y broses. O’r cymunedau lesbiaidd a ffurfiwyd trwy Dŷ i’r terfysgoedd cythryblus yn y carchar a ragwelodd Stonewall, dyma stori un adeilad a chymaint mwy – y bobl y bu’n eu cewyll, y gymdogaeth y newidiodd, a’r gwrthwynebiad a ysbrydolodd.

The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates – Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur – were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher.

Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis of queer and trans incarceration, connecting misogyny, racism, state-sanctioned sexual violence, colonialism, sex work, and the failures of prison reform. And he reconstructs the little-known lives of hundreds of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition in the process. From the lesbian communities forged through the House of D to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and so much more-the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.