Prison Writing and the Literary World : Imprisonment, Institutionality and Questions of Literary Practice

Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writin and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representatio and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critica methodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writin in relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance an independence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of developmen and awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cuttin across geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challenge arising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within th UK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, th Americas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflectio pieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experienc of the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between priso and the literary world. This book tackles international prison writing and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature, textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critical methodologies. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Notes on Contributors 10 Acknowledgements 16 Introduction: A Wide and Worlded Vision of Prison Writing 20 Problems and Silences 38 1 The Credibility of Elves?: Narrative Exclusion and Prison Writing 40 PoWs and Purges 58 2 German Military Internees Writing the First World War: Gender, Irony and Humour in the Camp Newspaper Stobsiade 60 3 The Prison Writings of Nikolai Bukharin 77 Prison Spaces and Nation (Re)Making 94 4 Prison Writing and the Algerian War of Independence 96 5 Writing from Robben Island: National Identity and the Apartheid Prison in South Africa 112 6 Writing South Africa’s Prisons into History 129 Censorship, Advocacy and Text Creation 140 7 “His Enemy’s Language”: African American Prison Life Writing, the Literary Forms of Institutional Power and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother 142 8 PEN and the Writer as Prisoner 158 9 Scribo Ergo Sum: Creating and Publishing Guantánamo Diary 175 From Life to Fiction 190 10 Writing Against the Regime: Metafiction in the Arabic Prison Novel 192 11 Anarcha-Feminism, Prison and Utopia: The Abolitionist Politics of Alison Spedding’s De cuando en cuando Saturnina and La segunda vez como farsa 208 Women, Theatre and Clean Break 226 12 Something About Us: Clean Break’s Theatre of Necessity 228 13 Unlocking Potential: The Role of Theatre Writing in Prisons in the Work of Clean Break 246 Literary Workshops 256 14 Literary Studies and the Teaching of Prison Texts 258 15 Folsom Prison Writing Workshop 275 Index 276 Institutionality;,Literary,practice;,Literary,world;,Political,imprisonment;,Prison,writing Institutionality,Literary practice,Literary world,Political imprisonment,Prison writing Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writingand writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representationand formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature,textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-criticalmethodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writingin relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance andindependence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of developmentand awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cuttingacross geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise,it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challengesarising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within theUK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, theAmericas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflectionpieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experienceof the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between prisonand the literary world. "Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writing and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation and formal aesthetics, the "value" or "values" of literature, textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks, and literary-critical methodologies"-- Provided by publisher