Researching Mass Incarceration and Prison Abolition: Art & Oral History

For 27 years, Janie Paul met Michigan artists and selected works for: The Annual Exhibitions of Artists in Michigan Prisons. This book includes 200+ images of these artists' work.

Excerpt from publisher's book description: "Taking inspiration from Public Enemy's lead vocalist Chuck D - who once declared that 'rap is the CNN of young Black America' - this volume brings together leading legal commentators to make sense of some of the most pressing law and policy issues in the context of hip-hop music and the ongoing struggle for Black equality."

Excerpt from this book's prologue (p. xvii): "Rather than perceiving the persistence of settler colonialism, the military and prison industrial complexes, immigration control apparatus, and other forms of state violence as signs of defeat, writers, artists, performers, dreamers and organizers continue to posit concrete visions of another world....the Black queer performance texts constellated here certainly offer powerful opposition to the nightmarish status quo, but they also generate new forms of collectivity rooted in care, instead of in systems of criminalization, coercion, and control."

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Excerpts from book description: "In poetry, dialogue and visual art the book follows two wandering poets as they make their way from village to village, across a prison colony moon full of exiled rebels, robots, and storytellers." A "toolkit for emerging poets and aspiring movement-builders."

In catalog record for this book, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBC). Unlimited user access. First-time use of EBC platform requires BLS patrons to click: Create Account. (Off-campus use: requires proxy.)
Includes: Track #7: Live from juvi: the artivism of Maya Jupiter and Aloe Blacc, a dialogue with Rosa M. Rios (aka Rosie).

In catalog record for this book, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBC). Unlimited user access. First-time use of EBC platform requires BLS patrons to click: Create Account. (Off-campus use: requires proxy.)
Excerpt from publisher's book description: "More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities; it also exposes them to shocking levels of deprivation and abuse and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America's prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author's own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions--including solitary confinement--these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender."

In catalog record for this book, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). Unlimited user access. (Off-campus use: requires proxy.)
Excerpt from book summary: "Bernstein explores the forces that sparked a dramatic 'prison art renaissance' in the 1970s, when incarcerated people produced powerful works of writing, performance, and visual art."