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Full Description
Tracking the evolutionary arc of prison writing across the twentieth century in an international and comparative framework, this study proposes an integrated account of the major shifts and movements in this relatively neglected genre of autobiography. Dwelling on works memoirs, novellas, poems by actual detainees, the book offers a close stylistic analysis of 12 important texts to show how prison writing moved away from the confessional and self-scrutinizing modes of an earlier tradition, to espouse openly political sentiments and solidarities. Looking at works by Oscar Wilde, Rosa Luxemburg, Ezra Pound, Primo Levi, Bobby Sands, Angela Davis, Ng?g? wa Thiong'o, and Behrouz Boochani (among others), the book shows how themes such as the annihilation of experience, dehumanization, sensory deprivation, brutality, and numbing routine are woven into distinctive textual artefacts that give evidence of an abiding human resilience in the face of raw state power.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Symphony of Sorrow: Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
2. Defamiliarizing the Dungeon: Alexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
3. In Immense World of Delight: Rosa Luxemburg's Prison Writing
4. Uncle Ez Do the Polis in Different Voices: The Pisan Cantos as Prison Writing
5. Seeing the Gorgon: Primo Levi's If This Is a Man
6. The Gulag Work Ethic: Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
7. Decorous Perceptions at the Cracking Point: Ruth First's 117 Days
8. House Style: Black Prison Writing of the 1970s
9. Living Hell: Bobby Sands' Prison Writing
10. 'Free Thoughts on Toilet Paper!': Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o at Kamĩtĩ
11. Antigone Evolved: Nawal el-Saadawi's Memoirs of the Women's Prison
12. So Much Malice: Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains
Bibliography
Index
