Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s

America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s

Bernstein, Lee

Paperback

Literary CriticismCriminologyGeneral Drama

ISBN10: 0807871176
ISBN13: 9780807871171
Publisher: Univ Of North Carolina Pr
Published: Apr 1 2016
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.68
Height: 0.55 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
In the 1970s, while politicians and activists outside prisons debated the proper response to crime, incarcerated people helped shape those debates though a broad range of remarkable political and literary writings.

Lee Bernstein explores the forces that sparked a dramatic prison art renaissance, shedding light on how incarcerated people produced powerful works of writing, performance, and visual art. These included everything from George Jackson's revolutionary Soledad Brother to Miguel Piñero's acclaimed off-Broadway play and Hollywood film Short Eyes. An extraordinary range of prison programs -- fine arts, theater, secondary education, and prisoner-run programs -- allowed the voices of prisoners to influence the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican writers, New Journalism, and political theater, among the most important aesthetic contributions of the decade.

By the 1980s and '90s, prisoners' educational and artistic programs were scaled back or eliminated as the war on crime escalated. But by then these prisoners' words had crossed over the wall, helping many Americans to rethink the meaning of the walls themselves and, ultimately, the meaning of the society that produced them.

Also in

Criminology

View All