Prison Literature - American Prison Literature

American Prison Literature

20th century America brought about many pieces of prison literature. Some examples of such pieces are “My Life in Prison” by Donald Lowrie, “Cell Mates” by Agnes Smedley, “Crime and Criminals” by Kate Richards O'Hare, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Malcolm X, “Sing Soft, Sing Loud” by Patricia McConnel, and “AIDS: The View from a Prison Cell” by Dannie Martin. Some other 20th century prison writers include Jim Tully, Ernest Booth, Chester Himes, Nelson Agren, Robert Lowell, George Jackson, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Kathy Boudin.

At the start of the 21st century, the United States had an incarceration rate of two million people, taking the lead with the highest imprisonment rate worldwide.

Prison literature written in America is of particular interest to some scholars who point out that pieces which reveal the brutality of life behind bars pose an interesting question about American society: “Can these things really happen in prosperous, freedom-loving America?” Since America is globally reputed as being a “democratic haven” and the “land of freedom,” writings that come out of American prisons can potentially present a challenge to everything the nation was founded on. Jack London, a famous American writer who was incarcerated for thirty days in the Erie County Penitentiary, is an example of such a challenger; in his memoir “’Pinched’: A Prison Experience” he recalls how he was automatically sentenced to thirty days in prison with no chance to defend himself or even plead innocent or guilty. While sitting in the courtroom he thought to himself, “Behind me were the many generations of my American ancestry. One of the kinds of liberty those ancestors of mine fought and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was my heritage, stained sacred by their blood…” London’s “sacred heritage” made no difference, however. It is stories such as London’s that make American prison literature a common and popular subtopic of the broader genre of literature.

For readers of American prison memoirs, it means getting a glimpse into a world they would never otherwise experience. As Tom Wicker puts it, “They disclose the nasty, brutish details of the life within – a life the authorities would rather we not know about, a life so far from conventional existence that the accounts of those who experience it exert the fascination of the unknown, sometimes the unbelievable.” He also notes that “what happens inside the walls inevitably reflects the society outside.” So not only do readers acquire a sense of the world inside the walls, gaining insight into the thoughts and feelings of prisoners; they also gain a clearer vision of the society which exists outside the prison walls and how it treats and affects those whom they place within. Tom Wicker described prison literature as a "fascinating glimmer of humanity persisting in circumstances that conspire, with overwhelming force, to obliterate it."