Part I: The victim as criminal and artist in America -- The first literary genre of the United States: the slave narrative -- The worker as criminal and artist: Herman Melville -- Part II: History -- Plantation to penitentiary: songs of slavery, peonage, and prison: A. Songs of slavery B. Songs of an imprisoned people -- A history of literature by convicts in America -- Part III: The present -- Two novelists of the American prison A. Malcolm Braly B. Chester Himes -- From Malcolm X to Attica and beyond: contemporary American prison literature
Notes
First published in 1978 under the title : The victim as criminal and artist : literature from the American prison
