Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Tom Wicker
Introduction
From Plantation to PenitentiaryPlantation Prison
Autobiography of an Imprisoned Peon (1904)Songs of the Prison Plantation
"Go Down Old Hannah"
"Midnight Special"
"Easy Rider"
The Early Modern American PrisonJack London
"'Pinched': A Prison Experience" and "The Pen: Long Days in a County Penitentiary" (1907)Donald Lowrie
from My Life in PrisonAgnes Smedley
"Cell Mates"Kate Richards O'Hare
from Crime and CriminalsJim Tully
"A California Holiday"Ernest Booth
"Ladies in Durance Vile"Chester Himes
"To What Red Hell?"Nelson Algren
"El Presidente de Méjico" (1947)Robert Lowell
"Memories of West Street and Lepke" (1959)The Movement and the PrisonMalcolm X
from The Autobiography of Malcolm XGeorge Jackson
from Soledad Brother (1970)Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck)
from The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim (1971)Mshaka (Willie Monroe)
"Formula for Attica Repeats" (1974)Piri Thomas
from Seven Long Times (1974)Jack Henry Abbott
from In the Belly of the Beast (1981)Assata Shakur
from Assata (1987)The Literary RenaissanceMalcolm Braley
from On the Yard (1967)Etheridge Knight
"The Warden Said to Me the Other Day" (1968)
"Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane" (1968)
For Freckle-Faced Gerald" (1968)Paul Mariah
"Quarry/Rock: A Reality Poem in the Tradition of Genet" (1969)
"Always We Watch Them" (1970)
Shakedown and More" (1971)Norma Stafford
"In Santa Cruz" (1972)
"The Gone One" (1973)William Wantling
from "Sestina to San Quentin" (1973)
"Poetry" (1973)
"Who's Bitter?" (1973)Michael Hogan
"Spring" (1975)
"Confessions of a Jailhouse Lawyer" (1975)Carolyn Baxter
"Lower Court" (1979)
"35 Years a Correctional Officer" (1979)
"On Being Counted" (1979)Jimmy Santiago Baca
"The New Warden" (1979)
"The County Jail" (1979)
"I Applied for the Board" (1982)Jackie Ruzas
"Easy to Kill" (1975)
"The Bus Ride" (1983)Edward Bunker
from Little Boy Blue (1981)Nathan C. Heard
from House of Slammers (1983)Charles Culhane
"Of Cold Places" (1984)
"Autumn Yard" (1985)
"First Day of Hanukkah" (1986)Patricia McConnel
"Sing Soft, Sing Loud" (1989)Kim Wozencraft
from Notes from the Country Club (1993)Jerome Washington
"Diamond Bob" (1994)
"The Blues Merchant" (1994)
"Nobody's Hoss" (1994)
"Barracuda and Sheryl" (1994)
"Shing-a-Ling and China" (1994)Kathy Boudin
"Our Skirt" (1997)
"The Call" (1997)Dannie Martin ("Red Hog")
"AIDS: The View from a Prison Cell" (1986)
"A Prescription for Torture" (1990)
"A Mount Everest of Time" (1990)Mumia Abu-Jamal
"B-Block Days and Nightmares" (1990)
"Skeleton Bay" (1993)
"Already Out of the Game"Jimmy Santiago Baca
"Past Present" (1992)

About the Author

Tom Wicker covered American politics at The New York Times from 1960 to the early 1990s, when he succeeded Arthur Krock as writer of the “In the Nation” column. He is the author of several books of nonfiction, including One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream, and JFK and LBJ, as well as several novels.