Asia Johnson

Out of Place

As a 2019 Right of Return Fellow, Johnson wrote, directed, and produced the short film Out of Place. It featured original poetry and a cast of formerly incarcerated women she met after being sentenced to nine years in the Michigan Department of Corrections at twenty- three years old.

On the impact of a Right of Return Fellowship:

“he last year of my incarceration, I was very focused on the goal of making a film. And when I came home in October of 2018, everybody knew Asia wants to make a film! Asia wants to make a film about the trauma to prison pipeline, as it relates to women. All that plotting and scheming, I still didn’t know how much money it was gonna take, who I needed to know, or what a film budget looked like. I just knew I was going to do it. I had been looking but I didn’t find Right of Return on my own, my friend Jonathan Rajewsky sent me the link. And that was literally like— not even a month after I came home after being away for nine years. I remember the application, it might not be the same now, but you could either submit an essay about what you would do with the money, what your art practice was like—or you could do a video submission. I did the video submission. I planned the whole video. Shot it. Edited it. Didn’t have the money to reshoot it—so I submitted it. And then I remember being in the car with my colleague and getting a phone call telling me I had gotten the fellowship. I was so excited, I got off the phone, and called my family. Then Right of Return called me right back like “Don’t tell anybody!” And I’m like “Oh! I just told everybody!” I was crying.

When you come home and somebody says “I’m going to give $20,000 to make your dream come true,”—they might as well have told me I had just got $20,000,0000! Like, oh my god, the sky is the limit. I can do anything! It was a seed that has grown into a freaking forest in me. I know that I would not be where I am today had it not been for Right of Return, that whole crew, seeing something in me.”