Reading Prisoners: Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845

Abstract

Incarceration presents us with a paradox: it is a system that is as shrouded in mystery and hidden from view as it is the subject of public fascination and exploitation. When I stepped behind the walls of a prison for the first time three years ago as a writing instructor, I quickly learned that penitentiaries generate a series of endlessly competing tensions. We simultaneously view prisons as a necessary and unavoidable feature of our cultural landscape, and yet remain largely ignorant of the realities that millions of men and women face behind bars. We accept arguments about rehabilitation and public safety and endlessly consume popular media about prisons (one need only look at the popularity of television shows like Orange Is the New Black), while at the same time ignoring the undeniable fact that we are, at a fundamental level, locking a large number of our fellow human beings—more than two million of them, by most accounts—in cages. For many Americans, the realities of prisons remain separate from our daily lives, but our rabid consumption of media that features prisons reveals our fascination with them.