The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration

David Coogan (Virginia Commonwealth University)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
02 October 2025

Series: Cambridge Companions to Literature

This book tells the story of mass Incarceration in America through the writers who experienced it first-hand. It begins at mid-century with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, whose insights about racism and the criminal justice system warned of what was to come. It takes off in the 1960s and 1970s with revolutionary writers like George Jackson, Assata Shakur, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, seeking liberation not just from prison but the oppressive structure of society that sustains it. It evolves in the post-revolutionary era with witnesses like Wilbert Rideau, Jack Henry Abbott, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, seeking self-determination and justice from these increasingly cavernous prison warehouses. And it ends with the stories of survivors like Shaka Senghor, Jarvis Masters, and Susan Burton in the 21st century seeking healing from the psychological trauma that led to prison as well as the trauma of prison.

Edited by: David Coogan (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Weight: 622g
ISBN: 9781009655415
ISBN 10: 1009655418
Series: Cambridge Companions to Literature
Pages: 354
Publication Date: 02 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Figures; Contributors; Chronology; Acknowledgements; Preface – Messages from the American prison H. Bruce Franklin; Introduction David Coogan; Part I. Forerunners: 1. Arresting Civil Rights: Dr. King in Jail S. Jonathan Bass; 2. Malcolm X's Prison Letters Herb Boyd; Part II. Revolutionaries: 3. No more brothers in jail: the memoirs of black panther party leaders Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton Flores A. Forbes; 4. George Jackson and the afterlives of 'Full Revolt' Dylan Rodríguez; 5. Angela Davis: radicalism and abolition Joy James; 6. Liberate Assata Shakur; 7. Leonard Peltier's sun dance David Heska Wanbli Weiden; 8. Mumia Abu-jamal on death row Johanna Fernández; Part III. Witnesses: 9. Albert Woodfox in solitary confinement Ernest Kikuta Chavez; 10. Making journalism in prison: Wilbert Rideau and Dannie Martin John J. Lennon; 11. Women's prison zines and activism Liz Canfield and Becca Ringle; 12. State-raised convicts: Jack Henry Abbott and Kenneth Hartman Doran Larson and Kenneth Hartman; 13. Becoming a witness: Jimmy Santiago Baca Seth Michelson; 14. Transmitting the lore of prison survival: from Amira Baraka to Etheridge Knight to Reginald Dwayne Betts Michael S. Collins; Part IV. Survivors: 15. Men's prison memoirs of trauma and recovery Ravi Shankar; 16. Reading wounds in women's prison writing Moira Marquis; 17. Susan burton's new beginning Vivian D. Nixon; 18. Qu(e)erying orange is the new black Kam Meakin; Guide to further reading; Index.

David Coogan is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, the founder of Open Minds, a college program in the Richmond City Jail, the author of Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail (2015), written with ten formerly incarcerated men, and the director of a criminal justice diversion program based on that book.