Doing Time
25 Years of Prison Writing
Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Crimes & Criminals, Criminology, Discrimination & Race Relations
| Author: | ISBN: | 9781628722185 | |
| Publisher: | Skyhorse Publishing | Publication: | November 1, 2011 |
| Imprint: | Arcade Publishing | Language: | English |
| Author: | |
| ISBN: | 9781628722185 |
| Publisher: | Skyhorse Publishing |
| Publication: | November 1, 2011 |
| Imprint: | Arcade Publishing |
| Language: | English |
A PEN American Center Prize Anthology featuring a quarter century of prison inmates’ prose and verse—with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean.
For more than three decades, the prestigious writers’ organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. Bell Chevigny, a former prison teacher, has selected the best of these submissions from twenty-five years to create Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing—a vital work, demonstrating that prison writing is a vibrant part of American literature.
The fifty-one original prisoners contributing to this volume deliver surprising tales, lyrics, and dispatches from an alien world covering the life span of imprisonment, from terrifying initiations to poignant friendships, from confrontations with family to death row, and sometimes share extraordinary breakthroughs. With nearly 2.2 million men and women—roughly the population of Houston—in American jails and prisons, we must listen to “this small country of throwaway people,” in Prejean’s words. Doing Time frees them from their sentence of silence. We owe it to ourselves to listen to their voices.
“There is a groping authenticity of language in Doing Time that encourages us to think again about prison life.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The collection’s prose is honed and direct, with many contributors striking a hypnotic balance between the urgency inherent in writing as survival and the punishingly absurd nature of their circumstances: though their literary imaginations range widely, bodily, they’re going no place.” —Kirkus Reviews
A PEN American Center Prize Anthology featuring a quarter century of prison inmates’ prose and verse—with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean.
For more than three decades, the prestigious writers’ organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. Bell Chevigny, a former prison teacher, has selected the best of these submissions from twenty-five years to create Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing—a vital work, demonstrating that prison writing is a vibrant part of American literature.
The fifty-one original prisoners contributing to this volume deliver surprising tales, lyrics, and dispatches from an alien world covering the life span of imprisonment, from terrifying initiations to poignant friendships, from confrontations with family to death row, and sometimes share extraordinary breakthroughs. With nearly 2.2 million men and women—roughly the population of Houston—in American jails and prisons, we must listen to “this small country of throwaway people,” in Prejean’s words. Doing Time frees them from their sentence of silence. We owe it to ourselves to listen to their voices.
“There is a groping authenticity of language in Doing Time that encourages us to think again about prison life.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The collection’s prose is honed and direct, with many contributors striking a hypnotic balance between the urgency inherent in writing as survival and the punishingly absurd nature of their circumstances: though their literary imaginations range widely, bodily, they’re going no place.” —Kirkus Reviews
