Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature

Reviews / Votes

Interest in prisons, particularly in the US, has been increasing in the past ten years or so, but for the most part the interest has led to scholarly or popular books detailing the extent of incarceration. Works devoted to prison writing have tended to be anthologies--among the recent ones, Bell Gale's Doing Time (2011). The current volume is surprising in that Wu (comparative and Chinese literature, Univ. of California, Riverside) and Livescu (PhD candidate, UCLA) focus on the aesthetics of past and present political prison literature, from Mao's forced-labor camps to Morocco's gender-biased justice system. The "aesthetics" in general--whether marked by decentered "rhizomatous forces" (to quote Wu) or articulating a quest for freedom--is seen in relation to the central problem of the material: the inexpressibility of the political prisoner's experience. Steering clear of broad sociological theories about repression or authoritarianism, the essays have a laudable sobriety, treating prison writings as imperfect evocations of torture, attempts at resistance, and even expressions of happiness in captivity. The wide geographical scope of the volume adds to the sense of objectivity. A fascinating and welcome book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; faculty; general readers. * Choice Reviews * The anthology is a good basic resource on political prison narratives. Of particular interest to researchers might be the way in which the narratives in this collection share dissidence as a theme that conforms neither to the state discourse on the events that took place, nor to the clinical and documentary report format that is necessary to document human rights abuses. * Interactions: UCLA Journal of Education & Information Studies * Yenna Wu and six distinguished authors offer analysis and perspectives on what one can learn from the writings of political prisoners. This is rich territory: the beginnings of political wisdom is seldom reached more dramatically than through the experiences of the victims of political persecution. * American Journal of Chinese Studies * Presented with a human rights report from one repressive regime or another, most readers will first comment on the horrors encountered without grasping the enormity of resistance calling for such repression. Characterized by a healthy mix of more established and younger scholars, this volume paves the way for such a transformation, for an understanding that prison memoirs are not lamentations but forceful political facts whose deeper effects on a society are pervasive. In opening literary criticism and cultural studies to the urgency of writing by political prisoners across a wide geographical and generic spectrum, these engaged essays delve into essential texts and historical moments in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Americas, North and South. Of particular note are the superb contributions on too little known figures from Syria, Morocco, Uruguay, and the United States. One hopes that the kind of work collected in Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature is the harbinger of further nuanced, contextualized, and informed presentations as essential texts excavated from the human depths of our repressive time find a wider and more general readership. -- Ammiel Alcalay, Queens College/CUNY Graduate Center This powerful volume theorizes late twentieth century political detainees' narratives from China, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Romania, Russia, Uruguay, and the U.S. Authors reveal how these documentary and literary narratives frame a rights discourse and play a critical role in uncovering the mechanisms of silencing and dehumanization practiced across the globe that would otherwise continue sub rosa. Was it not the stories of the Egyptian women and men thrown into jail after the April 2008 uprising that launched the 2011 revolution? A highly engaging collection of essays about testimonials, memoirs and works of fiction, Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature will not allow us to forget the brave women and men around the world who are prepared to pay for their demands that the truth be brought to light and justice be served. -- Miriam Cooke, Duke University This volume brings together a broad collection of scholarly essays that remind us that, while cruelty is a shared human trait, so too is the human capacity for creativity, eloquence, and courage in the face of such cruelty. These studies treat the aesthetics of the prison experience in the most sensitive and erudite terms. Focusing on the Middle East, North Africa, central Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the high level of scholarship of this work provides the historian, the activist, the literary critic, and the humanist with the means for better understanding genres of prison writing from around the world. -- Alexander Elinson, Hunter College of the City University of New York