Reading Behind Bars: Literacy and Survival in U.S. Prison Literature

This paper unpacks the contradiction between benefits of literacy and punitive prison policies that seek to curb or regulate reading by beginning with complicated historical relationship incarceration literacy. I then turn testimonies two prominent incarcerated autodidacts who now regularly teach within my literature classes both on university campus at a men’s prison. The writings Malcolm X Etheridge Knight model difficulties negotiating institutional risks personal political rewards learning read write behind bars—particularly while Black. What is more, may provide an “on-ramp” toward higher education, barriers for people continue proliferate in our current era form book bans, paywalls, material conditions prisons themselves.