Description
About the Author
Celes Tisdale is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo and editor of Betcha Ain't: Poems from Attica and We Be Poetin'.
Reviews
"When the Smoke Cleared . . . beautifully documents what it means to bear witness while teaching, and the great responsibility that comes with ushering voices from the inside of prison walls to the outside. . . . When the Smoke Cleared is a time capsule of the sharp minds, open hearts, and courageous souls of men brutalized by the United States criminal justice system." -- Malcolm Tariq * PEN America *
"When the Smoke Cleared . . . reveals a great deal about survival in the wake of state violence and about the uses of prison education. . . . Supporting efforts like Tisdale's are important, not because they reform the institution, but because they can aid incarcerated people in building inside-outside relations and solidaristic organizing across facilities." -- Elias Rodriques * Dissent *
"Among the many strengths of this anthology is a blunt acknowledgment of the uprising as part of much larger historical mechanisms: namely, the last gasps of the civil rights movement and the nation's violent reaction to Black liberation. . . . The poems serve as a bulwark against the forgetting of the Attica uprising itself, but they also document the inner life and creative expression of the incarcerated-making for a visceral and intimate argument in favor of prison abolition." -- J. Howard Rosier * The Nation *
"A riveting contribution to contemporary literary history and recent social histories of the uprising. This volume poses far-reaching questions about prisons as sites of cultural production and the mobilization of Black political subjectivity at the beginning of what we now call the age of mass incarceration." -- David Sherman * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"A valuable glimpse into the beginnings of prison and justice writing programs in the US, especially ones focused on the African American experience, as well as a reminder of the historical and continued importance of such workshops in transforming the US carceral system." -- Timothy Bradford * World Literature Today *
Book Information
ISBN 9781478018940
Author Celes Tisdale
Format Paperback
Page Count 152
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 249g