Lee Bernstein
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807833872
- eISBN:
- 9781469604046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807898321_bernstein.8
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses on the time when prison rehabilitative efforts seemed too narrow to the point where trying to scare people straight was the most visible prison program in the country. At the ...
More
This chapter focuses on the time when prison rehabilitative efforts seemed too narrow to the point where trying to scare people straight was the most visible prison program in the country. At the same time, alternative visions of prison life found numerous venues for expression and distribution. The work of prison writers appeared in small distribution publications such as the Fortune Society's Fortune News and Joseph Bruchac's Greenfield Review. Some found their work picked up by specialty houses such as Dudley Randall's Broadside Press, major university presses, and even some trade publishers. Perhaps the greatest incubators and benefactors of prison culture during the 1970s, however, were the movements for cultural nationalism among African Americans and Latinos.Less
This chapter focuses on the time when prison rehabilitative efforts seemed too narrow to the point where trying to scare people straight was the most visible prison program in the country. At the same time, alternative visions of prison life found numerous venues for expression and distribution. The work of prison writers appeared in small distribution publications such as the Fortune Society's Fortune News and Joseph Bruchac's Greenfield Review. Some found their work picked up by specialty houses such as Dudley Randall's Broadside Press, major university presses, and even some trade publishers. Perhaps the greatest incubators and benefactors of prison culture during the 1970s, however, were the movements for cultural nationalism among African Americans and Latinos.
Elleke Boehmer
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068782
- eISBN:
- 9781781701898
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068782.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing ...
More
In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing of the epic-length Petals of Blood (1977), Ngugi came unequivocally to identify with the plight of the neo-colonially betrayed Kenyan peasantry. His nationalism of the 1960s thus turned increasingly revolutionary and openly Marxist. With respect to his determination in the later novels to develop powerful women characters as counterparts to the strong hero figures he favours, in Ngugi's early work similar tendencies emerge in embryonic form. In particular, as the focus in the early novels is more on the remote past and the pristine origins of Gikuyu people, mother figures signify prominently. As if to make amends, Ngugi, in his more recent work, introduces heroines who have made a decisive break with a former life of mothering and/or whoring in their commitment to a revolutionary cause. To him, other interests give way before the ‘higher social system of democracy and socialism’ in a free Kenya.Less
In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing of the epic-length Petals of Blood (1977), Ngugi came unequivocally to identify with the plight of the neo-colonially betrayed Kenyan peasantry. His nationalism of the 1960s thus turned increasingly revolutionary and openly Marxist. With respect to his determination in the later novels to develop powerful women characters as counterparts to the strong hero figures he favours, in Ngugi's early work similar tendencies emerge in embryonic form. In particular, as the focus in the early novels is more on the remote past and the pristine origins of Gikuyu people, mother figures signify prominently. As if to make amends, Ngugi, in his more recent work, introduces heroines who have made a decisive break with a former life of mothering and/or whoring in their commitment to a revolutionary cause. To him, other interests give way before the ‘higher social system of democracy and socialism’ in a free Kenya.
