Incarcerated Words

Libraries gave us power. Little wonder then that Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has limited the access to literature for those we incarcerate. This ban on prisoners' books is currently being challenged from all quarters including academics, human rights lawyers and esteemed writers from around the world. Chris Haddon, Mary Beard and Philip Pullman are just three amongst tens of thousands to have signed a Change.org petition in a battle which looks set to rage for the foreseeable future. Beyond their most admirable motives, it's tempting to consider a more self-centred position, thinking of the rights of the reader. Imagine the literature lost through restricting prisoners' rights to read, and, as it serves as a window onto creativity, therefore to write. Some of history’s finest works were produced in captivity or inspired by stays there; that cold gruelling ‘day in the life’ with Solzhenitsyn and Ivan Denisovich, Brendan Behan’s formative years as a borstal boy, Jeffrey Archer's... no, let's stop there.

A prime example: Chester Himes, a man hidden within Ohio prison for a criminal act and now criminally hidden from the reading public, was sentenced to 25 years for armed robbery in 1928. Forget those fugazi fables spun from second hand bullshit, Himes wrote and published short fiction while actually living, observing and surviving life behind the penitentiary bars, using his creativity to stay cool with guards and inmates. How else could he have got down so tight with prison patois: “I ain’t no chump, I’ll sit on my G’s and hatch out my time. But by the time another year passed, three days were eleven feet tall, so help me I was straining my conk thinking of how I could get out.” (Money Don’t Spend in the Stir, 1944), and shame even Irvine Welsh with his grasp of dialect. “Twuz thirteen of us. Lesse. Yessuh, leben, twelve.  Nawsuh, fo of us is dead; me in prison, dat makes five.  Ten, Leben, twelve, thirteen, foteen – dat ain’t right.” (The Way of Flesh, undated) How else could he so vividly sculpt this unbearable scene of anxiety and prison loneliness? “He sat hunched forward on his stool, taut nerves drawing his body into a tense question mark, chin out. Muscles were shadowed roots, springing from the open collar of his blue prison shirt to his jutted chin.” (The Visiting Hour, 1936). He saw literary success on his release in 1936, against all odds, with his own publishing house sabotaging his too-raw treatment of 50s America’s racial nightmare, If He Hollers Let Him Go, refusing the reprint destined to make it a bestseller. 

So yes, libraries gave us power, gave it to Iceberg Slim; to change from pimping to prose, pushing dope to typewriter keys. Gave it to Malcolm X, at that time Malcolm Little, as he languished in Charlestown State Prison. Later to be saved by printed word and wisdom, as he recollects in his autobiography, “What they termed ‘the true knowledge of the black man’ that was possessed by the followers of The Honourable Elijah Muhammad was given shape for me in their lengthy letters, sometimes containing printed literature.” From these literary seeds he grew into ‘the man’s’ worst nightmare.

A cautionary tale for Grayling and warped reasoning to deny our prisoners those same rights of reading and learning, and a selfish reason for all who have or will read these great works (Archer excluded) to rally against him and sign that petition. Similar self interested challenges might be directed from his own political classes, those who have already served their time over cash for questions and ripping off the public purse, and the lying, cash-fiddling house flippers who maybe should.