Prison Life Writing is the first full-length study of one of the most controversial genres in American literature. By exploring the complicated relationship between life writing and institutional power, this book reveals the overlooked aesthetic innovations of incarcerated people and the surprising literary roots of the U.S. prison system.

Simon Rolston specializes in American literature. His work has been published in journals like American Studies, Critical Survey, and MELUS, and his article, "Shame and the Ex-Convict," was awarded the Canadian Association of American Studies' Ernest Redekop prize for 2018. He teaches at Langara College, in British Columbia.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION. Autobiography and the Problem with Resistance: The Conversion Narrative in Prison Discourse and U.S. Prison Life Writing
1. Conversion and the Story of the U.S. Prison
2. The Treatment Era: African American Prison Life Writing and the Prison Conversion Narrative in George Jackson's Soledad Brother and James Carr's Bad
3. From the Treatment Era to the Monster Factory: Carl Panzram and Jack Henry Abbott's Anticonversion Narratives and the Dawn of Mass Incarceration
4. Life Writing in the Contemporary Carceral State: Writing My Wrongs, A Place to Stand, and the "Making of a Better Human Being"
5. "Love is Contraband in Hell": Women's Prisons, Life Writing, and Discourses of Sexuality in Assata and An American Radical
CONCLUSION. "These Women Like Myself": Becoming Ms. Burton and Rereading Prison Life Writing in a Time of Crisis