America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s

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 Pi...