Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lockard, Joe

Titel

US Death Row Literature and Public Mobilization against Capital Punishment

Ist Teil von

• The Arizona quarterly, 2024-03, Vol.80 (1), p.57-81

Ort / Verlag

Tucson: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

Project MUSE: Universal journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The paper introduces a question of how narrative studies can contribute to abolition of the death penalty in the United States. A second section maps a history of Death Row narratives from incarcerated people and witness memoirs, including early American narratives, Sacco and Vanzetti, Caryl Chessman, and contemporary writers such as Albert Woodfox. This historicization lays a foundation for treating Death Row literature as a coherent witness genre. A third theoretical section argues that the major work of narratives opposed to the death penalty lies in humanization of condemned prisoners and assertion of a human right to life, yet this is an insufficient and flawed argument. Death Row literature from incarcerated people represents an inherent claim on citizenship and protection of a right to life, not sentimentalism. The paper closes by arguing that to have credibility and effect, writing from observers outside prisons demands an encircling link between witness and activism.