Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement
-
Aija Oksman
Aija Oksman received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she also has a master’s degree in American literature. Dr. Oksman has an undergraduate degree in literature and linguistics from the University of Salzburg and a master’s in publishing from the University of Stirling. Currently, she is an Independent Researcher, with her research interests involving resistance pedagogy and re-imaginings of selfhood and identity. As a multidisciplinarian, her research interests include literature, history and gender studies, the intersectionalities thereof, with focus on minority and marginalized groups and the notion of intellectual confinement and understanding creative resistance.
Abstract
Claudia Jones – journalist, radical, and a political prisoner later deported under the dubious Smith Act – was imprisoned largely due to her writings, which were considered by the FBI an attempt to overthrow the government with force and violence. Therefore, it was feared that given the opportunity, Jones would continue her radical literary efforts to attempt to incite an overthrow of the supremacist white heteropatriarchal government. Similarly, while incarcerated under dubious charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder, Angela Davis, kept writing. She wrote her political autobiography and several research articles, as well as her own defense statement which she went on to deliver in her trial. Davis’ writing was distinctly aimed at the same political and intellectual considerations as she had already dedicated her life to, as was Jones’ prison poetry. They wrote on behalf of other political prisoners, as well as decidedly calling out the racist and punitive practices that the American prison systems were abiding by. The texts explored in this chapter have been chosen to exemplify these acts of literary resistance while confined for their supposed dissident acts.
This chapter will explore selected writings of Claudia Jones and Angela Davis, written while they were incarcerated. The focus will be on how and why these texts agitated against attempts at intellectual confinement, and more so, how even while bodily incarcerated, the form of radical literature and production thereof may take different forms.
Abstract
Claudia Jones – journalist, radical, and a political prisoner later deported under the dubious Smith Act – was imprisoned largely due to her writings, which were considered by the FBI an attempt to overthrow the government with force and violence. Therefore, it was feared that given the opportunity, Jones would continue her radical literary efforts to attempt to incite an overthrow of the supremacist white heteropatriarchal government. Similarly, while incarcerated under dubious charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder, Angela Davis, kept writing. She wrote her political autobiography and several research articles, as well as her own defense statement which she went on to deliver in her trial. Davis’ writing was distinctly aimed at the same political and intellectual considerations as she had already dedicated her life to, as was Jones’ prison poetry. They wrote on behalf of other political prisoners, as well as decidedly calling out the racist and punitive practices that the American prison systems were abiding by. The texts explored in this chapter have been chosen to exemplify these acts of literary resistance while confined for their supposed dissident acts.
This chapter will explore selected writings of Claudia Jones and Angela Davis, written while they were incarcerated. The focus will be on how and why these texts agitated against attempts at intellectual confinement, and more so, how even while bodily incarcerated, the form of radical literature and production thereof may take different forms.
Chapters in this book
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
-
Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
-
Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
-
Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
-
Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
-
Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
Chapters in this book
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
-
Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
-
Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
-
Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
-
Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
-
Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
