Prison Writings in 20th Century America [Paperback]

H. Bruce Franklin (Editor), Tom Wicker (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

Harrowing in their frank detail and desperate tone, the selections in this anthology pack an emotional wallop...Should be required reading for anyone concerned about the violence in our society and the high rate of recidivism.—Publishers Weekly. Includes work by: Jack London, Nelson Algren, Chester Himes,Jack Henry Abbott, Robert Lowell, Malcolm X, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Piri Thomas.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the Autobiography of an Imprisoned Peon (1904), the memoirs of an indentured slave, to Jack Henry Abbott's In the Belly of the Beast, this collection presents sobering accounts of American prison life throughout the century. The stories come from all perspectives--innocent and guilty, comical and terrifying--but their common thread is the dehumanizing nature of prison existence. Sometimes poignant, sometimes violent, sometimes even funny, these stories are consistently disturbing and sobering glimpses into the incarcerated life. Prison Writing in 20th-Century America speaks for a largely silent but growing population. As the percentage of Americans who are incarcerated continues to climb, the stories in this book--and their testimonial to the depths to which both the jailed and the jailers can sink--become all the more urgent. --Lisa Higgins

From Publishers Weekly

Harrowing in their frank detail and desperate tone, the more than 60 selections in this anthology of writings about the prison experience in America pack an emotional wallop. According to Wicker's outspoken foreword, "prisons and the violence and despair they symbolize... are a blot on American life and history." The U.S. penal system contains a population greater than that of New Hampshire, and even the pretense of rehabilitation was long ago subsumed by the need to punish. Beginning with accounts of the victims of Jim Crow and Black Code laws in the segregationist South and going through the contemporary journalism of Dannie Martin and Mumia Abu-Jamal, these views from behind the bars should be required reading for anyone concerned about the violence in our society and the high rate of recidivism. Franklin, in his introduction, argues that the institution of slavery has its modern counterpart in penal servitude While he sometimes seems stuck in the clich?s of a New Left rhetoric, he has done a fine job of rediscovering the prison writers of the 1920s (a period of real flowering among convict writers, supported by H.L. Mencken's American Mercury magazine) like Jim Tully, Chester Himes and Ernie Booth. In this context, the more famous works of writers such as Nelson Algren, Malcolm X and Jack Henry Abbot, gain a fuller resonance. The book also highlights writers, like Piri Thomas, who are alive today but neglected. If the test of an anthology is whether it makes the reader want to pursue the works of the authors it presents, this provocative volume definitely qualifies.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140273050
• ISBN-13: 978-0140273052
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable insights into American society, January 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Prison Writings in 20th Century America (Paperback)

H. Bruce Franklin has done us a great service by providing us with insights into American society which most of us are too busy or too myopic to see clearly. Franklin's selection of works by America's prisoners from Melville to Malcolm X from O'Henry to Hogan provides a view of America from those who were marginalized by the dominent society. It is important that we as a people see and understand these observations and take them to heart. The introduction by Tom Wicker is as disturbing as some of the collected writings. Wicker, the noted journalist who covered the Attica Riots for the New York Times, lists the hard facts about the prisons of the 1990's. Crammed into warehouses, overcrowded, ignored by social services, the new prisoners are victims of a get tough drug policy which has quadrupled the number of inmates in the United States in the past twenty years, despite a decrease in the overall crime rate. America, the lagest consumer of drugs in the world, is also the largest incarcerator for drug users. Our unenlightened policy has resulted in the United States having more prisoners behind bars that any other nation in the world, including the former Soviet Union. It certainly explains our much bragged about low unemployment rate as well. With two million of our young men locked away in prison, the percentage around to be unemployed is drastically reduced. A boom economy. The unfortunate result of this domestic policy (discounting of course, the two million in prison) are our free young people who are denied adequate educational facilities because prison funds are a priority in the state budget. More and more, prisons are big business: good for construction, good for local employment, good for the politician's statistics, and good for the deep pockets of the correctional specialists. The damage our national prison policy is causing to the fabric of our nation is incalculable and will continue to cause damage for generations to come. Professor Franklin has done his country a great service. But, as previous reviews have shown, many of his fellow citizens would like to ignore this problem and put it out of sight, much like they have agreed to do with two million of their fellow citizens. Shades of the gulag. The delight of this book, however, is that the prisoners'writing shows that, despite being marginalized, despite being crowded, abused, and left to rot in a system of "indeterminate sentences," some men and women continue to not only preserve their souls, but actually create art and with it the power to move the rest of us to truly see and feel. We are not surprised that the caged bird can sing. We are surprised (to our shame) that it sings so well.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most important contribution to American Literature, March 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Prison Writings in 20th Century America (Paperback)

H. Bruce Franklin has assembled a remarkable collection of prose and poetry from America's most silenced corner. As a survey of prison literature (both poetry and prose), it educates and questions; as truth from America's most oppressed class of citizens, it is soul-shaking and heart-rending. The selections expose the ugly face of American justice, but also put human faces on its many victims. These days, it isn't popular to want to give prisoners anything, even credit for writing such powerful words. Yet their power cannot be denied. The men and women whose work appears in this book write to communicate their shattered lives with all the passion of any writer in the free world. Their words, sharp as razor wire, are hard to forget, and I commend Mr. Franklin for putting together such an unusual and revealing anthology. -Jeff Evans, Author of Undoing Time: American Prisoners in Their Own Words

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Real" stories, March 8, 2007

By 

G. Foroi "gene" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prison Writings in 20th Century America (Paperback)

The writings in this book gave me an insight into some of the most "real" experiences in our history. The writings are moving and are so deep you actually feel like you are living what they're writing. It helped me understand to not be so quick to judge people in prison and to remember that although they are in there, they are still human beings.