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 Pinero'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.