Prison Writing Anthologies in the United States

Abstract Prison writing anthologies have provided a defining presence in US prison literature. They have served as a vehicle for incarcerated writers to communicate with outside readers, even though early anthologies frequently relied on patronizing or obsequious language to gain publication. The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a surge in prison writing anthologies, a development that responded to rising social consciousness of prisons as sites created by and expressing racial, gender, and class inequalities. Sections of the present article address prison anthologies as a mobilization genre; an editorial typology of these anthologies; a brief history of this subgenre in the United States; and political consciousness and prison anthology production. The article discusses the emergence of prison anthologies as a coherent democratic publishing movement that has supported the twenty-first-century renaissance in US prison writing, and it theorizes this subgenre.